[mit-ac6] on finding true love
- From: ShaOliN TeMpLe <lil_shao27@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: mit-ac6@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 16:40:10 +0100 (BST)
On Finding True Love
>
> I began to learn about love in dancing school at
> age 12. I remember
> thinking on the first day I was going to fall madly in
> love with one of
> the boys and spend the next years of my life kissing
> and waltzing.
>
> During class, however, I sat among the girls,
> waiting for a boy to
> ask me to dance. To my complete shock, I was
> consistently one of the
> last to be asked. At first I thought the boys had made
> a terrible
> mistake. I was so funny and pretty, and I could beat
> everyone I knew at
> tennis and climb trees faster than a cat. Why didn't
> they dash toward
> me?
>
> Yet class after class, I watched boys dressed in
> blue blazers and
> gray pants head toward girls in flowered shifts whose
> perfect ponytails
> swung back and forth like metronomes. They fell easily
> into step with
> one another in a way that was completely mysterious to
> me. I came to
> believe that love belonged only to those who glided,
> who never shimmied
> up trees or even really touched the ground.
>
> By the time I was 13, I knew how to subtly tilt my
> head and make my
> tears fall back into my eyes, instead of down my
> cheeks, when no one
> asked me to dance. I also discovered the powder room,
> which became my
> softly lit, reliable retreat. Whenever I started to
> cry, I'd excuse
> myself and run in there.
>
> I finally stopped crying when I met Matt, who was
> quiet and hung out
> on the edges of the room. When we danced for the first
> time, he wouldn't
> even look me in the eyes. But he was cute, and he told
> great stories. We
> became good buddies, dancing every dance together
> until the end of
> school.
>
> I learned from him my most important lesson about
> romance: that the
> potential for love exists in corners, in the most
> unlikely as well as
> the most obvious places.
>
> For years my love life continued to be one long
> novel. In college, I
> fell in love with a tall English major who rode a
> motorcycle. He stood
> me up on our sixth date. In my mid-20s I moved to NY
> where love is as
> hard to find as a legal parking spot. My first
> Valentine's Day there, I
> went on a date to a crowded bar on the Upper West
> Side. Halfway thru the
> dinner, my date excused himself and never returned.
>
> At the time, I lived with a beautiful roommate.
> Flowers piled up at
> our door like snowdrifts, and the light on the
> answering machine always
> blinked in a panicky way, overloaded with messages
> from her admirers.
> Limos purred outside, with dates waiting for her
> behind tinted windows.
> In my mind, love was something behind a tinted window,
> part apparition,
> part shadow, definitely unreachable. Whenever I
> spotted happy looking
> couples, I'd wonder where they found love, and want to
> follow them home
> for the answer.
>
> After a few years in the city, I got my dream
> job-writing about
> weddings for a magazine called 7 Days. I had to find
> interesting engaged
> couples and write up their love stories. I got to ask
> total strangers
> the things I'd always wanted to know.
>
> I found at least one sure answer to the question
> "How do you know
> it's love?" You know when the everyday things
> surrounding you - the
> leaves, the shade of light in the sky, a bowl of
> strawberries-suddenly
> shimmer with king of unreality. You know when the tiny
> details about
> another person, ones that are insignificant to most
> people, seem
> fascinating and incredible to you. One groom told me
> he loved everything
> about his wife, from her handwriting to the way she
> scratched on their
> apartment door like a cat when she came home. One
> bride said she fell in
> love her fiance because "one night", a moth was flying
> around a light
> bulb, and he caught it and let it out the window. I
> said: "That's it.
> He's the guy."
>
> You also know it's love when you can't stop talking
> to each other.
> Almost every couple I've ever interviewed said that on
> their first or
> second date, they talked for hours and hours. For
> some, falling in love
> is like walking into a soundproof confessional booth,
> a place where you
> can tell all. I can't tell you how many women have
> told me they knew
> they were in love because they forgot to wear make up
> around their
> boyfriend. Or because they felt at ease hanging
> around him in flannel
> pajamas. There's some modern truth to Cinderella's
> tale - it's love
> when you're incredibly comfortable, when the shoe fits
> perfectly.
>
> Finally, I think you're in love if you can make
> each other laugh at
> the very worst times. As someone once told me, 90% of
> being in love is
> making each other's lives funnier and easier, all the
> way to the
> deathbed.
>
> I've interviewed many people who were down on their
> luck in every way
> - a ballerina with chronic problems, a physicist
> who had been on 112
> blind dates, a clarinet player who was a single dad
> and could barely pay
> rent.
>
> But love, when they found it, brought humor,
> candlelight, home-cooked
> meals, fun, adventure, poetry and long conversations
> in their lives.
>
> When people ask me where to find love, I tell a
> story about one of my
> first job interviews. He gave me some advice I will
> never forget. He
> said: "Go out into the world. Work hard and
> concentrate on what you love
> to do, writing. If you become good, we will find you."
> That's why I
> always tell people looking for love to wait for that
> "I won the lottery"
> feeling - wait, wait, wait! Don't read articles about
> how to trap,
> seduce or hypnotize a mate. Don't worry about your
> lipstick or your
> height, because it is not going to matter. Just live
> your life well,take
> care of
> yourself, and don't mope too much. Love will find you.
>
> Eventually it even found me. At 28, I met my
> husband in a stationary
> store. I was buying a typewriter ribbon, and he was
> looking at
> Filofaxes. I remember that his eyes perfectly matched
> his faded jeans.
> He remembers that my sneakers were full of sand. He
> still talks about
> those sneakers and how they evoked his childhood -
> things he cherished.
>
> How did I know that it was true love? Our first
> real date lasted for
> nine hours; we just couldn't stop talking. I had never
> been able to
> dance in my life, but I could dance with him,
> perfectly in step. I have
> learned that it's love when you finally stop tripping
> over your toes. A
> year after we met, we married.
>
> With each story I hear, I have proof that love,
> optimism, guts,
> grace, perfect partners and good luck do, in fact,
> exist. Love in my
> opinion is not a fantasy, not the stuff of romance
> novels or fairy
> tales. It's a gritty and real as the subway, it comes
> around just as
> regularly, and as long as you can stick it out on the
> platform, you
> won't miss it.
>
ShAoLiN
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