Unrequited Love

My first celebrity crush happened at the tender age of ten. I couldn’t get over the fact that I would never meet Opie Taylor (Ron Howard) from “The Andy Griffith Show”. In my young mind, since he is two years younger than me, it should be possible to meet him and become very close friends.

I pined for him like a long-lost best pal. He appeared in my daydreams that merged into imaginary episodes of the famous television show. After I finally faced the reality about his life and that Opie was an imaginary character, the crush subsided somewhat. The unrequited love remained in a more subtle form. I realized that I was just another invisible kid who fell in love with a star.

Regarding famous depictions of unrequited love in popular culture a lot of folks think about “Peanuts” character Charlie Brown and his love for the “Little Red-Haired Girl”. She never appeared in the newspaper comic strip but was still an important character in the comic. Charlie Brown was head over heels in love but never gathered the courage to talk to her. I wonder how many school boys have ever related to Charlie Brown’s dilemma.

To be the unrequited lover is to be one of life’s most frustrated people. The emotional swings can be dramatic because the emotions cannot be authentically fulfilled. The unrequited lover feels euphoric, then depressed, then falsely confident, then suffers from low self-esteem, then the cycle repeats on and on.

Unrequited love is such a powerful force in human life that it has inspired great literature through the ages. Examples are found in the works of William Shakespeare. Here is a grand passage from “A Midsummer  Night’s Dream”:

“Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?
Scorn and derision never come in tears:
Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born,
In their nativity all truth appears.
How can these things in me seem scorn to you,
Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?”

Other literary examples of works that include a theme of unrequited love include Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, and Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Dickens puts a more upbeat spin on the subject than the others.

One of the most poignant sentences I’ve read about unrequited love is from writer Rashida Rowe. “The worst feeling is falling for someone and knowing that they won’t be there to catch you.”

Of course, to feel unrequited love is not limited to romantic interpersonal relationships. Some of us feel attachments to geographical places like cities or places in nature. For instance, I have a deep and abiding unrequited love for India. The idea of living there is beautiful, but the practical logistics of actually doing so don’t seem to be workable at this stage in my life. India is a place I can only visit as a tourist.

One of the best aspects of unrequited love, is that it presents itself as an endless source of material for writers. Thanks for reading my writings today.

Ciao
The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes film and stage star Daniel Radcliffe. “People do incredible things for love, particularly for unrequited love.”