Romance can apply to any relationship, even a temporary one such as a discussion. You have a romance when there is strong engagement.

I was immersed in the romance of the Olympics. Sports is engagement hence romance? All sport is romance of a very visceral/bodily stripe.

I’ve always wondered if sports was bad for the spirit? The need to compete and showing your support for your country. The need to challenge self is good. The need to compete is damaging, but in any sport those are mixed.

Sports make very little pragmatic sense too. A romantic notion. It’s true. It isn’t a pragmatic undertaking, and pragmatism would have us kill others of our own kind as we deem necessary. We are barely above pragmatism. It isn’t a noble state.

The opposite of romance is apathy, and you can easily find people living the life of apathy. Living in the apathy dynamic, they are perhaps actually the most common.

Apathy is disconnection from everything? I feel that sometimes. Apathy = lack of caring. If you hate something you care about, it can even rise to the level of a romance. The opposite of hate is not love. It’s indifference. Indifference = apathy. You have no romance when you have no heart/spirit. They often say a boxer has a lot of heart, because they fight hard and seem very committed to the challenge.

Sex often has no romance. Sex aids aren’t romantic unless they fulfill some expressive motivation with the persons who use them. A sado/ masochistic relationship can be very romantic. It’s not a romance if it’s superficial. If it’s the only way you know how to act. Lack of choice is lack of romance.

Romance comes from the heart, not the head. You can’t learn it. But you can discover it though it’s inappropriate to accuse another of lacking romance. Usually if you feel moved to do so, the one lacking it is more likely you.

I think it can be learned from others? It can be discovered with others. It has a context, because it only exists in context. But it can’t be “learned” as there is no learnable information. What can be learned in romance?

Training? Then you teach behaviours, not the dynamic. If I express warm feeling once and only once, is that romance?

What do you think of Valentines Day? I see it as a religious/spiritual day. It has no romance of its own, but can serve as a day for mindfulness. A gate to romance in your life in general.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~