Notebook - First Love to Second Love

'Notebook' is a fairly good movie. I found only one aspect of the movie grating, unfortunately it is central to the movie. I have been trying to understand why the well-loved movie, 'Notebook', just did not feel right to me. I know many friends who love the 'Notebook' and having seen in multiple times, wouldn't miss an opportunity to see it again. Most of them I suppose are people who have had some cherished 'first love' experiences. I think the teen 'first love' is a great experience for some people.

In as much as the movie depicted 'first love' for the sake of 'first love', I seemed to like the storyline, but then there comes a point at which the story line is unnaturally twisted to the exchange the reality of 'mature love' for the dream of 'first love'. A rich aristocratic girl exchanging the lover of her twenties with an accomplished affectionate guy for the love of her teens with a popper working in a lumber yard, just seemed too incongruous to how human nature works. Of course, there is ample empirical evidence of teenage daughters of multi-millionaires falling in 'first love' with puerile paupers. But I have not heard of any instance, even in the novels that celebrate idealistic romance, where lady in her twenties exchanges her love with a classy, rich, accomplished and affectionate guy for the love-of-her-teens with an obscure popper. I think there have been novels where, true to the basic human nature, the opposite happens, where a lady's teen 'first-love' for the boyish teenager quickly disappears when she gets enamored by the real manly aura that surrounds the mature and accomplished man in his twenties.

I would call this love of twenties as 'second love'. This is definitely much stronger than the 'first love' of the teens. I think, qualitatively, there is little difference, between the first love of the teens and the second love of the twenties in that they are both profoundly visceral experiences. Moving on to the differences,  I think the first love of the teens is but a fore-taste of the second love of twenties which is bound to be much more realistic and longer lasting than the first love of the teens, for the simple reason that the guy and the girl are more a man and woman in their twenties than in the teens.

The 'first love' of the teens is a dream. It is a dream that will come true in the love of the twenties. To have the love dream comes true in the twenties, as in the movie 'Notebook', and then to revert back to the teen dream just does not seem sane. Reverting back to the dream of 'teen love' is not akin re-living the dream, it is a chasing after a mirage. This is precisely why 'Notebook' seems grating to me. 'Notebook' is a celebration of the reverting back to the dream which was just meant to be a foretaste of the real thing. This 'Notebook' reverting back, is almost like becoming an adult and getting a McLaren and then saying, "No, I'll exchange my McLaren for the NFS video game I played when I was a kid". It is almost like going to heaven and then on the gates of paradise, saying, "No, I'll exchange heaven for life on earth."