FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE

Who would you choose to marry? The one you love or one who loves you?

This is the question posed to me by friends of my age (youth in the 30s, of course!). They ask me this like it is the one question that would determine their lives, the one essential question for their "ever after" happiness (I guess in certain way that's true). Some of them are like me who have passed through a love and lost and wonder if another one of equal magnitude will come our way; thus, the argument goes something like time is moving and maybe it is good enough to settle for someone who loves you dearly because you will be infected by the love and will somehow learn to love the person as well. Others meanwhile try to contend with marrying the one they love but is having a hard time waiting and is being hurt by the other's capacity to "reciprocate"; in effect, how much the other loves them at this point in time.

Well, I would submit that it does not really matter how or who you choose. But the point is that you do choose, and you do commit yourself completely. A matter not to be taken lightly, even if there are so many complications surrounding it, and so many scenarios to justify either one or the other. What is more important is this ---that whichever way one chooses, one should understand that with the choice comes the following terms... that one must learn the following---

to love,
fall in love,
be in love, and
stay in love.

It does not matter how the sequence of events go, but the point is that one's life must be geared to complete these terms.

I'll requote this again, as it gains more and more meaning to me every time (an excerpt from the novel Five People You Meet in Heaven);


"People say they 'find' love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. And Eddie found a certain love with Marguerite, a grateful love, a deep and quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable."


...And, oh yes! All of us, by the way, must also learn the humble art of giving, because, after all, in the end, this is what love and happiness is all about, right?