Recent Gaming Addictions

Well… I recently started playing games in the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney series. It’s a weird crime solving visual novel kind of game where you basically solve crime cases that always involve situations that are more than meets the eye. The games generally involve finding yourself so far up the creek without the paddle that the situation always seem hopelessly lost as you try and work your way out of a case and try to turn it around and find the true criminals. For some reason, I can’t get enough of these…. seemingly tragic, hopeless scenarios that get turned on its head. I dunno if I have mentioned in the pass about my pure hatred I have for romantic movies… anything that has a fairy tale love story I tend to utterly despise…. But… I find myself finding these set of games…. likeable… The main focus of the game is of course, not a love story but a story about the life of a defence lawyer. Somewhere in the background, the tragic love story of the lawyer is woven into the fabric of the story, but as the nature of the game goes of course, the tragedy gets turned on its head. Somehow, I think I only find this story more appealing due to the amount of problems and complications that arise and interfere… Perhaps it is because it’s a story, albeit a fantastically intricate tale, that reflects reality ever so slightly. It reflects the imperfections of any meeting, of how more often than not, things cannot be ideal and comfortable. Fairy tale knight in shining armour type romance just makes me cringe violently to be honest… But somehow… this story I found quite moving… the story kind of ends with the cliffhanger… the girl was in prison for being an accomplice in a murder case in which the victim had murderous intent to kill an innocent girl, and the lawyer was on visitations. But that was where it got left at… So I suppose because of the less than ideal circumstances, I have this nagging wish that the game producers continue to unfold this story arc. Alas, I don’t think that’s happening… It was only a visit with some implied remnant feelings… but nothing explicitly stated the nature of their relationship and is all left to the speculation of the player. So I guess I still find the ending slightly unsatisfactory… but hey… I don’t normally like romantic stories so this is a first in itself I guess…

Ramblings 1

I’ve been thinking about how the human spirit seems to be solely driven by love or the need to feel loved/need to love. While I suppose that finding someone who reciprocates love could possibly be one of the greatest joys in this life, the catch is that unrequited love also feels like a sledgehammer to the face. I wonder, what was God’s original intention for creating this man-woman relationship?… Sure humans have clearly fallen from perfection and have chosen not to follow God and therefore miss their life purpose, but unrequited love seems like an inherent component to love that is unrelated at all to the imperfections of mankind.

Where am I going with this? well… In the bible, Adam and Eve (first humans) were created in the Garden of Eden. They were perfect at the time and had not rebelled by taking the fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil. They were commanded to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth and all it’s creatures. Adam and Eve are the first married couple right? They were created to be in relationship with each other. Now with only 2 people that were a match made in Heaven, not much can go wrong, but what if they did not rebel and continued to multiply and prosper? With a larger pool of people that are trying to find partners is it not inevitable to reach a point where unrequited love exists?

So why am I thinking about this? well… In the last book of the Bible (Revelations), it mentions that when believers reach heaven they will be in fellowship with Jesus and will be made perfect (as Adam and Eve were also perfect at the time of creation).

Revelations 7 :17 

“For the Lamb at the center of the throne
   will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’^[b]
   ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”

That verse about wiping the tears away, well apparently according to commentaries its about how, in the perfect renewed life in heaven, believers will have no more sorrow and tears. Well the thing is, in the beginning humans were perfect before God to begin with so by being renewed we are made perfect again… So that would mean they had no sorrow or tears either at the beginning, at least not until they turned away.

So back to the speculation of whether unrequited love would exist if humans never rebelled and simply multiplied and enjoyed life as it was intended. It’s a mind boggling bit of hypothesising really. Well it is mind boggling if you read it as “unrequited love is bitter, therefore it could not exist if there is no sorrow.” since it is counter intuitive to the fact that as a population gets larger, conflicting (love) interests are almost guaranteed. However, I suppose there is another reading of Revelations 7:17… God will wipe away the tears… which means that the tears have to be there in the first place. As in God will comfort those with a reason for sorrow in person. In this perspective, I guess its not as confusing really… It’s more about God being a source of comfort and guidance for those who are wallowing in sorrow.

I guess in light of the second reading of the passage, unrequited love could possibly coexist with perfection (in the scenario of humans having never rebelled). The bible states that marriage is specifically related to the existence of a physical body on earth and hence this whole rambling so far is merely based on the speculation of what would happen if man never sinned in the first place. For the believers who enter the Kingdom of God, there will be no marriage since there is no sin (lust) that needs controlling, and there is no death that there is no need for reproduction. God is the Heavenly Father, so to enter Heaven is to be invited into his family… So there is no longer any need to be married, which is used to form new families.

I suppose unrequited love and rejection is something that seems to be intrinsic to the nature of love. So the sadness that is also linked to it has been a source of fascination to humans since the dawn of time basically… In theatre and drama as well as art, in fact any creative medium has long been created around the exploration and expression of the joys and sadness that comes with love and love unwanted.