Sing Along
Posted By Lonesome Loser on January 21, 2010
(Musicals on the mind today, sorry!)
I’ve been thinking about the tension between our perspectives, and those of our Loved Ones or others, and how opposed they often seem to be.
Would-be lovers see their love as “real,” whereas everyone else (including the Loved One) sees it as “unreal” or a “crush.” Very frustrating! This is just part of unrequited love — when you have intense feelings and the other person doesn’t, the more intense feelings get downgraded to crush status or something similar. When you’re in the middle of being “in love,” it seems very intense and real even when it’s not returned. However, when someone loves you, you tend to see them as having a crush on you that will soon enough pass. There’s nothing inherently right or wrong about either of these perspectives, they’re just different.
It’s like we’re all arguing with each other over what’s going on. It’s just semantics, like the Gershwin song Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off in the film “Shall We Dance”:
You like [potayto], I like [potahto]
You like [tomayto], I like [tomahto]
Potayto, potahto
Tomayto, tomahto
Let’s call the whole thing off!
On another musical note, unrequited lovers tend to feel jealous and competitive with our Loved One’s significant other (duh!). We generally feel like we have at least as much to offer as the overvalued SO, who could not possibly feel the same way about the Loved One as we do. Much like another showtune, Irving Berlin’s Anything You Can Do in “Annie Get Your Gun”, we want to sing out to (or at least in the general direction of) their significant others:
Anything you can do, I can do better,
I can do anything better than you
No you can’t! (they would say)
Yes I can! No you can’t!
Yes I can! No you can’t!
Yes I can, Yes I can!
We have to be able to laugh at ourselves, guys, lord knows everyone else does!
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