romantic reformation

belated Valentine's Day conceptual analysis

There is romance in religious and artistic practices, among many others, as well as in interpersonal relationships. Under my conception of romance, a romantic practice is one with the following criterion of success: your execution of the practice must legibly mirror your mythic ideal of that practice. If it does, your practice will be infused with the heady aesthetic quality of romance. It will be beautiful to you.

This criterion can be met either by acting carefully to correspond with the mythic ideal in an effortlessly legible way (e.g., by making romantic gestures), or, if the correspondence is not effortlessly legible, by doing the interpretive work to make it legible (e.g., by entertaining romantic notions). Alternatively, you might ongoingly construct your regulating mythic ideal to reflect your actual practice — or a potential practice, because it is hard to build a boat you are currently sailing. There is no ordinary-language expression for this last, constructive strategy. Let’s call it romantic reformation, with the idea that the mythic ideals which regulate romantic practice are romantic forms.

If you want to love what is good, consider that it might help to fall in love with it first. The commitment to being good to people is made sweeter and more effortless by romance. If you are trying to stay committed to cultivating the good, then your mythic ideal of this practice should be one which makes ordinary successes (ordinary kindness, ordinary virtue) into romantic gestures. If there is no romance for you in simple acts of goodwill, this calls for romantic reformation — big alchemy!