(500) Days of Summer.
1. You can control who you fall in love with + We make our own soul mates.
It’s simple. Match.com will lie to you and tell you that we have 99 versions of compatilibilty when we all know better. We can create our own soul mates if we try hard enough. You know you have. You find someone you are attracted to. The recipe is clear - Attraction + the X factor. You already like them. But that’s not enough. Society dictates that it’s not that simple. So you look for a string. A single string that allows you to fall in love without question. YOU like The Smiths? I LOVE the Smiths. YOU like sci fi? I LOVE sci fi. And then we hold on to it. It validates us. It validates them. If you think hard enough, you can make anyone “the one”.
2. You can’t control who the other person falls in love with. You can’t control fate.
Boy meets girl. Girl hates relationships. You break up. Two months later, she’s engaged. You wonder…WTF. Was there something wrong with…me? It’s frustrating. It’s unexpected. You want answers. She can’t give any. It’s happened to you. You break up with a girl/boy. You look at the guys she’s dating. You are WTF. They willl never last. You go home and console yourself with false hope and list 101 reasons why that union is impossible. Oh, come on. She specifically hates guys that wear Ed Hardy. She will never date a guy that’s 5’7”. She said she’ll NEVER date a guy that’s that douchey. But guess what, she is. And you can’t control it and she can’t explain it.
3. It always plays out better in your head + Sometimes wanting something bad enough is not enough.
My most favorite scene from (500) Days of Summer is when she invites him to her house for a party and he has this whole scenario in his head. She’ll be eager to see him, they’ll talk all night, they’ll reignite their fire. Happily ever after.
But it doesn’t. How many times has that happened? You are just so sure that it’ll play out the way you want it to. It’s strange. You feel like you know them so well that it’ll go exactly as it plans.
Because hey, you guys are meant to be.
It’s part validation. It’s part pride. It’s part insanity. Sometimes during the excruciating period between break up and being ok, you want it to work so badly even when all the signs are pointing to no. Some insane part of you believes that if it fails that the last six months of your life was a farce. You want everything that you felt to be.. real.
Tom: What happens when you fall in love?
Summer: You believe in that?
Tom: It’s love, it’s not Santa Claus.
