The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

dies. The girl is so upset that she drinks a potion that will
put her to sleep for two days. But, unfortunately, the young
couple hasn’t learned the ins and outs of good marital
communication yet, and the young girl totally forgets to
mention something about it to her new husband. The young
man therefore mistakes his new wife’s self-induced coma for
suicide. He then totally loses his marbles and he commits
suicide, thinking he’s going to be with her in the afterlife or
some shit. But then she wakes up from her two-day coma,
only to learn that her new husband has committed suicide,
so she has the exact same idea and kills herself too. The
end.
Romeo and Juliet is synonymous with “romance” in our
culture today. It is seen as the love story in English-speaking
culture, an emotional ideal to live up to. Yet when you really
get down to what happens in the story, these kids are
absolutely out of their fucking minds. And they just killed
themselves to prove it!
It’s suspected by many scholars that Shakespeare wrote
Romeo and Juliet not to celebrate romance, but rather to
satirize it, to show how absolutely nutty it was. He didn’t
mean for the play to be a glorification of love. In fact, he
meant it to be the opposite: a big flashing neon sign
blinking KEEP OUT, with police tape around it saying DO NOT
CROSS.
For most of human history, romantic love was not
celebrated as it is now. In fact, up until the mid-nineteenth
century or so, love was seen as an unnecessary and
potentially dangerous psychological impediment to the
more important things in life—you know, like farming well
and/or marrying a guy with a lot of sheep. Young people
were often forcibly steered clear of their romantic passions
in favor of practical economic marriages that would yield
stability for both them and their families.
But today, we all get brain boners for this kind of batshit
crazy love. It dominates our culture. And the more dramatic,