True Love

I saw the new Pride and Prejudice flick the other day with some ladies from my department. Actually, I'll go ahead and out myself. First we watched the 5 hour and ten minute BBC version and then made a mad dash to the movie theater (It was like a scene out of Burn Out 3!) to see the Keira Knightly version that just came out. The new movie was pretty good, though I was a bit Jane Austen'ed out by the end of the 8 hour affair.

One scene in particular moved me more than any other. In this scene, Elizabeth Bennett is in bed with her sister Jane. The warm lamplight illuminates the cozy tent they've made with the sheets. They are giggling and whispering about the dance they had just attended, in which Jane had met her new crush Mr. Bingley, a handsome man of good fortune and potential husband. (I know, I know, this description is perhaps putting a final nail in the coffin for any hipster persona I could have glued together from bits of coolness in my life. Hey, I'm a sucker for 18th and 19th century literature.) Anyway, my point is that this scene was so authentic I wanted to cry. It captured perfectly the pure delight and bathing warmth you feel when you love your sister and the two of you are completely in agreement over the importance and loveliness of some trivial event. I have two sisters and many times have we played out this very scene.

I think that you can achieve this kind of love with people who are not your siblings, but the physical comfort is hard to attain with a non-family-member. Even lovers and partners, who probably find themselves in bed together more often and more naturally than siblings, have an entire dimension of complicating emotions (good and bad) that would ruin or preclude this kind of intimate moment.