How to Be a Romantic

No more searching, no more waiting.

That’s what co-blogger Jon commented after I briefly updated him on my current love/relationship status. And he completely hit the nail on the head. Though I’ve been busy, certain recent posts were inspired by real feelings, a recognition of truth in those words, rather than just conjecture.

Here’s an abridged version of our story.

He and I met in Hong Kong during our Study Abroad program in the Fall of 2006. He, from Holland, I, from the States. He noticed my aviator sunglasses and long brown hair on an early orientation field trip. I noticed his blonde curls and his obvious non-asian height (standing at almost 6’3”). Luckily, I don’t remember who broke the ice and began the small talk, but while walking to our dorm hall one evening he invited me to meet him and some friends at the waterfront for a midnight swim. We swam. We jumped off a small lighthouse about a quarter mile away from shore, into pitch-black nothingness. Twice. It was one of those moments, you recognize right away, that in this lifetime, it’s definitely a special one. Fast forward through the semester. I started dating someone else. We had friendly breakfast appointments. We hooked up. We had the awkward after hook-up ordeal. I ran away. He ran after. I ran further.

He ran to Berlin in March of 2007. We fought. He ran to New York in October of 2007. We fought. We met up in South America in the summer of 2008. We actually got along, less tension. He ran to New York again in December of 2008. We dogsledded in Canada and slept in a teepee thingie in -25 Celcius. We fought until we were sick of each other. But throughout all those years, we emailed each other on a constant basis, kept in close contact and updated each other on important events in each others’ lives, and basically shared the quintessential love-hate relationship.

I visited him in January of 2010 in Amsterdam, with no expectations and even a little hesitation. It was by coincidence (or Fate) that he had just moved back to Europe from China. Never had I been so blown away by how connected one human being can be with another, how in sync. By March, we were flirting but carefully treading in Madrid. But it was in Rome - March 2010, when we fell in love with each other, or maybe, realized we loved each other all along. That maybe we were the 100% perfect one for the other. I have never felt these emotions before him. The ones that run through my veins and wake up my butterflies every few minutes. The ones that I had only read about in stories and desperately wanted to believe in. There is no one else I’d rather spend the rest of my life with, and I’d not try to imagine an alternative. We have the past but we’re the present and the future. We aren’t him and I anymore, we’re us.

He says he’s never been a long-distance runner (he used to do the 400 meters), but I think he’s wrong. If there’s a goal, he’ll reach it. I love him. Admire him. Believe in him. He makes me laugh. Makes me think. Makes me better. I can’t describe in enough words how happy, grateful, and lucky I am that he finally reached me. We just weren’t ready before. And Timing chose now. This feeling of love, and of being loved - it makes life much more simple. It really is, the only point.

Dear 12-year-old Self,

I wish I could show you all the things I’ve learned through blood and sweat and pain and tears. One thing I always wanted but never knew how to do was to be close with other people. It turns out, it’s quite simple. But it’s the exact opposite of what you might think.

I spent most of my life trying to protect myself from pain. Trying to hold up a self-image of being smart and good and all-around valuable. But it turned out, the better I was at this, the further I was from any real connections.

People think they love things that are better than them, smarter than them, more attractive than them. But the truth is, people love what they can see themselves in. They simply end up giving the successful, the good-looking, more of a chance. They’re just more likely to forgive them.

If you want to be loved, you must risk revealing your deepest vulnerability. Other people will see this universal vulnerability in themselves, and love you. This will be scary, but in the end, worth it.

…Of course, not being loved isn’t the real problem. Maybe I’ll cover that in a future letter.

Your 20-something Self

Documentary

Suppose you were going to make a movie, whose subtitle would be “The Life and Death of [your name goes here].” And suppose there were three possible choices for the title itself:

• Pride
• Fear
• Surrender

What are your feeling-reactions to each possible title? How well does each one, when you consider it, describe your experience? And what is the relation of surrender to pride and fear?

What specific occurrences of self-surrender have you witnessed? Have there been surrenders to others? What were the motivations in each case? Did the surrender leave you feeling inflated or deflated? Have there been surrenders to what you might consider lower aspects of yourself? Higher aspects? Did they leave you feeling better about yourself or worse? Have the surrenders been voluntary or involuntary? How is surrender connected with control? Have you willingly surrendered some control to what you might consider a higher principle or power? If so, what did you hope to gain by doing so? If not, is the motivation based on pride or fear? What do you really want from your life, and what would you be willing to surrender if necessary?

— Art Ticknor, Solid Ground of Being

compassion

noun. Deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it.