Moped in bed for a bit of the morning, which turned into an internal amateur philosophy hour. Conceptualized something about the nature of love that I sensed, but hadn't really grokked. Just putting it here because it seems true, and like something to share.
There's this weird thing that happens, when people really care about a work of art, story, or other media despite not always enjoying it. A work doesn't have to be fun or enjoyable to feel important, to matter to us, or to keep us coming back. We often love shows, works, etc. that we're sad, angry, or conflicted about, or which are difficult to watch for whatever reasons. In gamedev, I've heard it said that fun isn't the innermost purpose of playing games; we play them even if they're difficult because they engage us (and losing isn't truly Fun so much as Engaging). I believe our relationship with other art is the same. Fun is something that can make us engaged, but we don't have to enjoy what's happening in a game, or to characters in a book or show, to be drawn to experience it. We want to experience it because it engages us, and we care about it.
More than that, though, I think this engagement with art is the same thing as Love between people. Most folks know that sadness or anger can easily coexist with love, because love and happiness aren't the same. Whether they enjoy it or not, it's when folks are emotionally or mentally engaged with each other that they're "in love." The people we don't love are those that we don't care about or care to know. Something that can make love hurt is when someone else matters a lot to you, but you seem to matter much less to them. It doesn't matter if you're having fun together or not; if you're not feeling similarly engaged with one another, you're not in love, which usually creates hurt feelings.
When you love a work of media which responds to the love and attention of fans like you in some way, that builds up your sense of engagement and loyalty. In a way, we feel loved back by those works of art that seem to understand us as people, or which respond to things we as fans particularly liked; when the engagement is mutual, love grows. When we put time or engagement into media that seems to not understand us, we feel sad or disappointed. It's much like when we spend time supporting or doing nice things for people who don't seem to recognize it or care about it, or take it for granted. That disappoints and hurts us in very similar, though usually in more intense ways than art does.
Ultimately, engagement may really be about our Time, and what's important enough to us to spend it on. Every day, we decide what's most worth spending the limited days of our life on; what people and activities we will occupy ourselves with physically, mentally, or emotionally. Time is very precious, and each of ours is limited, which may be why unrequited love or a lack of mutual concern and understanding hurts and frustrates us the same way "wasted time" does.
Whether it's art or people we love, we just want the life-time we spend engaging with that to mean something. We just want a sense of being known, cared about, and understood.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9762083 times)