Paper and Fire

Charlyne Yi doesn’t believe in love. Or so she says. Though she never says it explicitly, it’s probably more accurate to say that she doesn't believe in fairy-tale, romantic “love.”

“Paper Heart” follows Charlyne as she embarks on a quest across America to make a documentary about this subject she doesn’t understand. As she and her good friend (and director) Nick search for answers and advice about love, Charlyne talks with friends and strangers, scientists, bikers, romance novelists, and children. They each offer diverse views on modern romance, as well as various answers to the age-old question: does true love really exist?

Then, shortly after filming begins, Charlyne meets a boy after her own heart: Michael Cera (the actor from “Juno” and “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”). Combining elements of documentary and traditional storytelling, reality and fantasy, “Paper Heart” brings a unique perspective to romantic comedies; however, I suspect there’s far more fiction in this film than there appears to be.

“Paper Heart” so combines reality and fantasy, so blurs the lines between the two, it’s best not to take anything in it too seriously. Still, it is, nonetheless, thought-provoking.

I found watching “Paper Heart” odd and interesting because Charlyne Yi doesn’t believe in love, and there’s nothing I believe in more.

Of course, that’s not exactly what I mean. Belief is cheap. Easy. Shallow. Practice is the thing. As a philosophy, a religion, a way of being in the world, I attempt to practice love. I’m committed to it.

There’s nothing more central to my existence than love, and there I was sitting in the old AMC theater in the Panama City Mall, where back in the day, I went on my first movie date, watching a film about a person who claims not to believe in love.

Throughout the film, on a road trip of sorts, Charlyne asks people what love is, and it’s interesting to see people grapple to define love—and to hear how different their definitions are from one another.

I sympathize. Love is difficult to define. But this is how it should be. Defining something limits it (which is why it’s best not to do it, or when we do, leave an opening). Love can’t be limited. It must be free. Love and freedom are inseparable. How can we define something that is bigger than, and, in many ways, beyond us and must be free?

The longer I watched the movie, the more I realized that Charlyne, the girl who doesn’t believe in love, and me, the boy who believes in it more than anything, are actually much more closely aligned than it would first appear.

When Charlyne claims not to believe in love, she actually means romantic, lightning-bolt, head-over-heels infatuation where the object of our desire and affection becomes the god of our idolatry and that this is true love. But this isn’t love at all. Sure, it’s been known to lead to love, but more often than not it leads to disillusionment. Why? Because it’s an illusion—a projection onto a person of what we want and need. It’s a fantasy. Love is a reality.

Don’t get me wrong, I fall in infatuation all the time. It’s a heady and happy experience, and I even refer to it in the popular parlance as “falling in love,” but I know enough to know it ain’t love. It’s like. It’s desire. It’s attraction. It’s fire. It’s not love.

What is love then? I’ll happily give you one of my definitions if you promise to leave it open so it can be free.

Love is the uncoerced and unconditional commitment to continually accept and extend as a response to Love itself.

God is love. Love is God. Love flows to us, then through us. We are responding to love by loving God back, genuinely and without ego loving ourselves, and loving all others as ourselves.

Is my definition wanting? Of course. Any and all definitions of love are. It’s the same with God (a coincidence? I think not).

Love is universal. It can’t be limited to one person, one family, one tribe, one race, one nationality, or only to those who love us. Sure, people do it, and even call it love, but it’s not. If I “love” only “my” children, it’s not love. If I “love” only “my” parents, it’s not love. Who are my children, my parents, my brothers, my sisters, my wives, my husbands, my neighbors? Everyone. Or no one.

Does Charlyne find love? Does she discover what it really is? You’ll have to pay your dollar to see “Paper Heart” at the mall or wait until it comes out on DVD December 1st to find out. But you don’t have to wait any time at all to be loved and to love. You, like Charlyne and me, are loved. We just are—nothing we can do about it—and what we do with that unconditional acceptance determines the quality of our lives and the good we do in the world more than anything else. By far.

Whether we have a paper heart or an organ of fire, we are loved and meant to love—not in word only, but in deed. After all, love is not a condition, but an action—a verb, not a noun.

If you, like Charlyne, are not sure you believe in love—or even know what it is, just try this. Open yourself up to it, to how accepted, valued, cherished you are, and then commit to love as a way of life, begin to accept others (no longer judging or condemning), extend yourself for them, do, to the best of your ability, what is best for them, and see what happens.