How Do Chan and Shakespeare Define Love

Do you believe in love?

How do you define love? How do you react to the statement that I love him or her the first time I see him or her? Are you going to call it “love” when you see the person for the first time? Is attraction love? Whatever you say, you all have the reasons to refuse to accept and believe what others say. We need to consider two perspectives from William Shakespeare and Jose Mari Chan about life and love.

A photo taken from Marwa Abdelghani at https://thetempest.co/2015/07/02/life-love/are-women-more-emotional-than-men/

SONNET 116 By William Shakespeare

      • Let me not to the marriage of true minds
      • Admit impediments. Love is not love
      • Which alters when it alteration finds,
      • Or bends with the remover to remove.
      • O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
      • That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
      • It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
      • Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
      • Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
      • Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
      • Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
      • But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
      • If this be error and upon me prov’d,
      • I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

According to William Shakespeare, “love” is not “love” if it alters. If it changes, it does not mean love. He says that “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom” means that love does not change. It does not alter even the slightest time. Love must be longstanding until death or to the edge of doom. Shakespeare challenges critics and readers to prove him wrong about his assertions and observations about love.  

CONSTANT CHANGE By Jose Mari Chan

      • We’re on the road, we move from place to place
      • And oftentimes when I’m about to call it home
      • We’d have to move along
      • Life is a constant change
      • The friends we know, we meet along the way
      • Too soon the times we share, form part of yesterday
      • ‘Cause life’s a constant change
      • And nothing stays the same, oh no
      • Clouds that move across the skies
      • Are changing form before our very eyes
      • Why couldn’t we keep time from movin’ on?
      • Hold on to all the years before this moment’s gone?
      • Why must we live the days at such a frightening pace?
      • We’re all like clouds that move across the skies
      • And changing form before our very eyes
      • Have we outgrown our Peter Pans and wings?
      • We’ve simply grown too old for tales of knights and kings
      • ‘Cause life’s a constant change
      • And nothing stays the same, oh no

Jose Mari Chan declares that life is a constant change. It means that all actions, events, objects, and things in this world change. Jose Mari Chan asserts that all things come and go and that people are travelers on the road that moves from place to place. He mentions that people sometimes stay a bit longer to call the place home but that they have to move along. It is because things happen and change. Since there is no permanence in this world, all things change. In other words, we are all subjects to change, like love.

Indeed, Jose Mari Chan supports Shakespeare’s definition of love. As Shakespeare states that all things change, he means that love changes. Love fades. Jose Mari Chan observes this for years and notes that people and other things are travelers in the world and in this nick of time. As Shakespeare says, “love” is not “love” if it fades, will you still refuse to believe him? Are you gonna deny Jose Mari Chan’s assertion of the impermanence of life and all things? You do the math!