The other night I had dinner with a
friend, good man, good heart, seen enough of life to know what it is. He’s
alone again and I’m coming on my twenty fifth anniversary. So we talked
about relationships the how’s and why’s. I've kept thinking the last few days.
So many things must come together
to have a relationship that lasts. So many fail at the start, from attitudes,
expectations. It only makes it harder as you try and make it happen, harder
still if you fight, from fear.
How to find someone, I’m no help,
how to keep, perhaps.
Start with someone you like to hang
out with and do. Don’t think about romance, don’t think about sex, and don’t
think about what may be. Sit over coffee and watch passersby. Read the paper
together. Go for walks. Simple things will tell, no movies where the two of you
sit in darkness watching someone else’s fantasy, not the concert hall or
playhouse. Simple quiet times will tell. Are you friends? The young and the
ones not ready to go the distance are the ones that need romance. With experience
we grow less fascinated with the drama, less susceptible, some of us even
immune.
Sometimes a lover becomes a friend
and it works. A more likely path is to fall in love with a friend. Start with
something real. Nothing from Disney or Pixar, nothing ethereal, not gossamer
but granite, and no shining polished slab, a chunk broken from the mountain,
hard, plain, with sharp edges. Beautiful in its way but the look of it tells
you there’ll be pain, if you look, if you see. Pain will always come, just as well
to see it early and know whence it comes. The polish comes with time, with
patience. How rough a piece can you handle? Don’t start with some monstrous
struggle. What that means only you can know and you need too.
Deb and I have been together many
years. We have our marriage. We have our love.
It is no clear sun shinning bright
on us. That light makes hard shadows, places you can’t see into. More like a
high clouded sky. Everywhere is lit, the shadows are open. There is nothing
hidden, the truth of us is plain, easy to see and understand. It is no dream
that keeps us together, but the simple truth of who we are, what we've been
thru together, the bond that has grown stronger thru the good times and the
bad. The commitment we made to each other, the stubbornness to see it through.
No fairy tale romance, no plate of gold, more a fistful of rich earth, you can
feel the grit and know the fullness of life within it. That is our marriage and
I can think of nothing more wonderful, nothing I could treasure more.
Good luck.
Each blade of grass has its spot on
earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land
from which he draws his faith together with his life. Joseph Conrad
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