True Love

Anna is an innocent product of modern media when she assumes any mention of love refers to Romantic Love, and she does her best to soak up education on the subject. At age 32, she’s disappointed to assert: the certain kind of light which seems to alter everyone else’s life has never ever never shone on her. However, she’s not surprised anymore when her life unfolds differently than norms or expectations suggested it would. She thought she’d own a house before she reached age 27, and she’d believed she’d also occupy challenging yet comfortable employment with a company devoted to improving the state of the world regardless of financial cost to them. Or she'd build her own lucrative, altruistic business of world-saving importance. This job would be entirely fulfilling, she would every week spend sixty-five hours there and still have energy and time to paint watercolors and help at a soup kitchen. Indeed Anna would be so happy, her supply of peace and laughter would fuel her body more than money or food or sleep ever could. Anna would drive very little so as not to tax the environment, and she would remain effective and efficient even as she accomplished most errands on foot. This regular exercise would spare her the expense of a gym membership and would combine with frequent attendance at the local yoga studio to guarantee her impenetrable physical and mental health. Occassionally she would be called upon to teach a yoga class, where she'd impart insights so compassionate, lives would be forever-altered. Anna would be generous, she would share vegetables and flowers from her lush garden with most everyone--even bringing her primary-care physician fresh peppers when she visited the office for her annual physical (never would she need to make an appointment to address illness.) She would tithe and additionally spare her church the expense of a florist by providing the congregation with a bounty of floral arrangements for the weekly altar and for funerals! There’d be no lacking in this full life. At the center of this image of the future is the confident, joyful partnership God has arranged for her, the kind poets, musicians write about when they speak of love.

Well, Anna thought she’d have met and wed her “other half” before her twenties had lapsed. She’d heard of Love so valuable it can only be quantified in how it would make her half-being feel whole, and she definitely thought she’d be “completed” by now. She’d heard that despite finally being a full person, she would somehow also be blind; but as mostly she’d heard that Love is an illogical phenomenon, she trusted any wrinkles presented by its appearance would feel like resolution.

Because Love is ideal, seemingly ubiquitous and yet unavailable to her, it is mysterious and Anna has consequentially become obsessed with imagining how she’ll finally land on Love. She allows her mind to linger on fabrications of how her story will unfold, inserting various real-life characters into the role of Man of Destiny. The tall, lightly-bearded brunette in the waiting area of the dentist’s office was reading an actual book instead of a magazine, which means his vocabulary would probably rival her own and their children would be indisputably eloquent, well-read by the age of three. . . Her older male friend from church is single, and his comments in Bible study evidence his fulfillment of the Intellectual Christian requirement of her “meant-to-be. . .” The man who’d held the door for her at the post office might’ve been handsome if she’d looked at him more closely, maybe she should have smiled at him with greater appreciation so they could have recognized their mutual attraction--as well as their similar need for an updated passport. Hey, they both like to travel, maybe her rushed exit from the building had inadvertently closed the door to a life Love and worldwide adventures with an exciting companion . . . Maybe Anna had made a mistake in not calling the guy she’d met at that Art Fair . . . He’d voiced some atheistic blasphemy as they’d together assessed certain collages, but her faith could’ve led him to convert and as he realized he couldn’t live without God, he’d know he could not exist without Anna. . . Maybe she’ll start shopping in the town where they’d met, maybe they’ll run into each other and as they select organic pears, they’ll uncover a pressing hunger to know more about each other. A slightly paunchy middle-aged man recently moved nearby, maybe Love will blossom between them if one of her strolls intersects with his dog walking routine. Perhaps she’ll inspire in him desire for a higher level of fitness and health and they’ll form an unbreakable bond over this life-adjustment . . . Or maybe one day Anna will run into a guy she’s dated before and they’ll realize they made mistakes and they’ll apologize and see they were actually in Love the whole time. They’ll agree they can be separate no longer. Anna hears this happens sometimes.

These fantasies are never serious, they merely pepper Anna’s daily routine with a delusional yet faithful entertainment. Her imagination keeps her vision optimistic as each humdrum moment fails to explode into a fateful meeting with The One. It will happen when she least expects, so she’s always ready for it. She never thinks “I won’t meet him here,” and this is how Anna’s “love life” is, despite appearances, real.

Any appearances of a love life are for the world’s benefit, anyway, so others can believe she’s as content in her solitude as she really is. Life has educated Anna about a True Love that doesn’t often produce lyrics, she knows more than most about how people behave when they are motivated by Love. She knows that to Love someone is to pause one’s life long enough to visit them when they’ve been life-changingly injured; Anna knows True Love eases crisis instead of remaining comfortable at home. True Love also cares for and comforts that person’s family. Anna knows True Love prays when the doctors have nothing good to say--and then prays more. She knows that to Love somebody is to treat them as if they are valid and desirable when they have nothing to offer but foolishness; she knows True Love nods and smiles when a compromised friend makes no sense. She knows True Love laughs and shrugs when a friend is lost far and late again. Anna’s life has unfortunately called forth evidence of Love from a friend who stood with her as she vomited into a urinal because she choked on her lunch. To Anna, to love someone is to provide constantly-available transportation when a friend is too stupid to drive. Anna knows Love is as quiet as remaining silent in the torture of enduring a friend’s stench and as loud as making them feel humorous when they are steeped in tragedy. True love says “thank you” even though a friend’s, sister’s, daughter’s cheap presents are useless. (True Love understands that's the best they could do.) Anna knows that to love somebody is to look away as they make change in the offering plate or take off too many clothes at dinner. Anna has seen a scope of Love not all are privy to. She knows Love is, was shown when you said my half-paralyzed face was still pretty. Love is when you said I'd get better--and meant it. Love is when you brushed my hair, Mom, and for the hundredth first time, told me I’d been in an accident. Love is not always meeting someone new. Sometimes Love is found in appreciating what remains.