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Last Saturday, I had coffee with a dear old friend of mine. She and I have quite a history together -- we've known each other through depressions, losing faith (and regaining it), crazy spontaneous road trips in the middle of the night due to insomnia, and momentous accomplishments, just to name a few. She is one of three soul mates. Did I also mention that she looks like Kate Winslet?
Anyhow, I saw her last Saturday. And my God, it's been a while since I've last seen her. We conversed over a cup of coffee. I had no idea, however, that this conversation would later throw me in for a loop.
She's still in love with the man that she fell in love with about a year ago. As she was describing her relationship, her engagement, and how she hoped her future with him would entail, I found myself...well...keeping mental notes, like a virgin in India as she leafs through a book on the Kama Sutra (Okay, that comment might offend some, and I know that an Indian virgin would never leaf through a book on the Kama Sutra, since not all Indian girls are prepared to be paramours, but...let's put political correctness on the wayside, shall we? It's old, and it's overrated.).
THE CONVERSATION
"How do you know it's love?", I asked. She responded:
"I knew when the tiny and everyday things surrounding me -- the leaves on the ground, the shade of light in the sky, the flowers on the table, a familiar voice -- suddenly shimmer with a kind of unreality. The tiny details of him, however unimportant and mundane to others, is fascinating to me. One night, a moth was flying around a light bulb, and he caught it and let it out the window. That's when I knew, for some reason, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him."
"When was that?", I asked.
"Our second date."
THE DAY AFTER
She had left that Saturday evening. The day after, that entire conversation just hit me and placed me in a down mood. I have never known my friend's sort of love.....is it possible for each and every person on this Earth to know that sort of love at some point? There are those who never knew what it was like to be loved, there are others who are so desperate to be romantically loved that they compromise themselves to the first person that'll find remote interest in him/herself, and thus call that love....even though in actuality it's infatuation or empty sex. The thought of this made me somber.
I've known many people who were down on their luck in every way -- an artist who I worked with in college who was unable to sell his paintings and living in an illegal loft with leaky plumbing; a ballerina I trained with who had chronic back problems; a physicist who had been on 112 (yes, he did keep count) disastrous blind dates; a clarinet player who was a single dad and could barely meet rent payments in Berkeley. But love, when they found it, brought humor, candlelight, fun, adventure, poetry, home cooked meals, and interesting conversations into their lives.
That Sunday, I looked back on my first job interview....back in the day when I was a teenager. I interviewed for a job at some big corporate office in Palo Alto. I had no experience or skills, and he didn't even for one second consider hiring me. When I got home, my dad comforted me with some advice that I'll always remember. He said, "Go out into the world. Work hard and concentrate on what you love to do. If you become good, they will find you. It may take five years. It may take ten. But if your work stands out, they will call you."
That's what I finally told myself in regards to love. Love, in my opinion, is not a fantasy experience, not the stuff of trashy romance novels or fairy tales. It's as gritty, real, sometimes brutal and rough as the subway, it comes around just as regularly, and, as long as you can just stick it out on the platform, you won't miss it.
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