Still Madly In Love

(originally written on May 14, 2011)

That was the caption that one of my friends wrote to describe a photograph he posted on Facebook of his grandparents during his most recent vacation back home to Lebanon. The woman, staring adoringly up at her husband with a smile from ear to ear; the man, looking into the camera full of life, confident and gleaming with happiness. I remember last year when my friend visited his family and posted a similar picture of his grandparents and I commented what an adorable couple they were. He said how much they love each other. This year his caption read “Still madly in love”. It brought tears to my eyes to see them again and to read that caption. I don’t know this couple but, for some reason, I love them. Or maybe I love what they represent.

I can’t help but wonder what their secret is – that elusive secret to an everlasting marriage and love. How can two people be married for so long, have children, grandchildren, and still be just as deeply and madly in love as when their story began. If anything, it is proof to the cynics of the fact that it is possible. But to Man Of La Mancha-style dreamers like myself, it makes me wonder if I’m just dreaming the impossible dream. I’d like to think that I’m not. I’d like to think that those really are windmills.

If only I knew what that couple’s secret is. Or is there really such a thing as a secret? Is the real secret just being lucky enough to find the right person? For once you find the right person, shouldn’t it all come about naturally? Shouldn’t the magic then just… happen? Is it really all just luck?

Sometimes I wonder if it’s even luck. When I was 21 I thought I had found the perfect person. He was an intellectual – if he could spend every waking moment of his life reading, he would – and oh the conversations about religion, politics, philosophy, science, often until the sun came up. He had wit to charm anyone’s socks off. A staunch liberal – anti-war rally, with a dad who worked in city government in his hometown, democrat of course. I loved how political he was. A fellow scientist – biologist as well, though different specialty from mine, something that would come to haunt me later on. A consummate hippie, though born around 10 years too late, I’m afraid – barefoot every time he could except in the laboratory and only because it's not allowed. Longish curly hair, hippie clothes, hated socks, John Lennon reading glasses, hippie music complete with a Grateful Dead concert. A total slob when I met him – suffice it to say the days-old piles of dirty dishes in his sink would often have LARGE six-legged creatures come out when you moved them. Nevertheless, love was born instantly. I usually fall in love with a mind, a heart and a soul and the love that ensues builds a great deal of tolerance, so I accepted him the way he was and learned to keep a can of Raid handy just in case. We never, ever argued. If we had a disagreement, we discussed it and reached a common ground. One couldn’t ask for a more civilized relationship which, after the environment in which I grew up, I felt was a special gift God sent me. I truly felt he was “the one”.

I received a phone call one week before my birthday. I heard a very familiar voice say: “We have to break up”. I can only equate the feeling at that moment to that of those dreams you have where you’re just falling down some unidentified precipice. You just keep falling and falling and there’s nothing you can do, nothing to hold on to, and you’re terrified that any minute you’re going to hit a concrete bottom and meet a swift, painful death. Discussions, explanations, nothing made sense. Amidst the mushroom cloud of the A-bomb that had just been dropped upon me I vaguely heard that I was being told a week before my birthday so as not to ruin my birthday by being told on the day itself. I was being shown a shred of consideration in what otherwise felt as the end of life as I knew it. He then visited on my birthday that following week. Probably one of the grayest, grimmest birthdays I have ever experienced. The funeral to a six-year relationship.

So there I sat, thinking how could it be that I thought I had it all in that perfect-for-me person, I thought I had found true love, and it was not to be. It taught me that even when we think we have it all, there are no guarantees. So how do we know, then? What’s the secret? Even when you think you have the perfect person, it can all come crashing down in a New York City minute. Nothing is guaranteed, take no one for granted; the only guarantee is right now. We know nothing about tomorrow. We really don't.

As for healing from blows and heartbreaks as big as this and moving forward, all we can do is take a chance, and good things may happen or bad things may happen. But one thing's for sure: if we don’t take a chance, nothing will ever happen. It's a lot like playing the lottery or learning how to swim: how can you ever win if you don't ever buy a ticket. You'll never learn how to swim if you don't ever get in the water.

As much as I have issues with organized religion, I have always considered myself a very spiritual woman and deeply cherish my one-on-one relationship with God. There is a passage in the Bible which I came to know years later that defines love and which I adore and regard as "The Love Commandments": 

“Love is patient, kind and never envious. 

It does not boast, it is not arrogant or conceited. 

Love is not rude and it does not insist on its own way. 

Love is not ruled by anger, but forgets offenses and forgives. 

Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 
-- I Corinthians 13:4-7. 

Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the secret. As long as you find someone that shares in this definition of love and if both make that lifetime commitment to put it to practice, bliss will surely ensue. What is so magical about this passage is how, despite being found in the Bible, this definition of love clearly transcends all religions and cultures. It must, because I know my friend’s grandparents are not Christian, and yet one look at them and somehow I’d like to think that they are the embodiment of I Corinthians 13:4-7 and that this is how they’re “still madly in love” after all these years. Therein lies the transcendental magic within this biblical passage.

It's not about a secret, then, is it. 

It's just.... magical.