Waiting

There is a face in the crowd; a face that is not easily recognizable. It is so common and yet so different. As you pass one another, you see only a smile and the power of it overtakes you and makes you slightly happier than you were only moments before. You can't quite place your finger on it, but there is something there, something on that face that makes it different than all the others that pass before it.
Love is like a smile that lights up a face; it is contagious and recognizable. For those of us still searching for our matching face in the crowd, it is easy to find ourselves picturing what could possibly happen should we ever be graced with it.
I can only describe how I felt when I was in love, the way it overtook me; how it made weeks and months pass like minutes. When I felt as if I was in love, it was as if everything in the world was a little bit brighter, every smell a bit stronger, each sound a harmonious song. Each bit of news, each coversation was an elation, lifting me higher and higher to a place I had never been. Suddenly, every difficult obstacle seemed to be only a positive thought away, every day like a new beginning.
I cannot help but picture and hope for what it may feel like again one day when I am graced with that feeling again. The only problem is, I cannot accept less than someone great.
It's easy to talk about being a good person, and even more difficult to actually be one. Our actions seldom truly match our words and the definition of integrity seems to be lost on so many in society today. Treating each other with respect is a talent lost, and one that I hope to one day find again.
It seems to me that one would be so lucky to have qualities such as kindess and honesty. Why is it that when one enters a relationship, suddenly a tangled web of deceipt and mistreatment suddenly becomes a circular unbreakable pattern?
While I point to the flaws in others, so I too have flaws. Sometimes my heart speaks too much and my logic too little. But the truth beckons me to speak from the voice that cries within my soul. Sometimes it seems impossible to love another human being without wanting anything from them.
But it is love that calls me to speak from my heart. I cannot go from having love to feeling emptiness and expect to bounce back with unaffected exuberance for I am human. Having known what love feels like, I cannot help but wish to find it again. One cannot go from learning the abundance and potential of one's heart and not hope to one day reach that level again.
Yet in a world made difficult by life, and the complications it entails, love does not come in a form we often easily recognize. And sometimes, it passes us by entirely. Sometimes, for all my qualities, talents, and experience, I feel hurt and rejected by those who would only see my flaws. In kind, I hurt and reject those to whom I cannot relate or who I feel are selfish and self-centered.
I cannot help but want someone to love and cherish me, not just pretend to. I can't help but want someone who likes children, loves life, and plans to make the most of it with me. A good life is not created by watching the television night after night expecting to grow.
In the end, as simple as we would try and make it, it is a complicated thing, love. It is full of heartache and sorrow, excitement and adventure, and ups and downs and we may not always enjoy the journey. But I would argue that it is the journey towards love that makes it all worthwhile.
I try to find love, and I give it a chance, because I believe that it can succeed in my life. Through the twists and turns and good and bad, I am willing to be the person who sticks it out, who goes the distance, who stays strong.
The only sense of doubt comes from the unknown. The twisting nether of unknown and often missed opportunities and the chance of loving, but not receiving love in return. Those are the fears. Those are the worries. Those are the chances you take when you reach out for love.
But in the end, it is not so much whether you win or lose the battle. The strength and the power comes from being willing to reach out your hand. To be willing to try ... try to make something work, try to fix something when it goes wrong, try to make it last ... those are qualities and talents we hold out for. Those are the ones we wish to take with us on our journeys. But fear of the unknown holds us back. Fear of rejection, of being alone, of a million other things, prevents us from doing those things we know we want to do.
I have often been criticized for choosing to be alone so long. But that feeling of being in love was worth the rest of a lifetime without it ... I cannot accept a life with anything less. As simple as that answer seems, and as obvious, it is suprisingly not. It is easy to give in to my physical needs and just accept someone who is in the "here and now" and pretend. But I know real love; it is like a beacon of hope in my soul that it is possible to find someone like that again.
So alone I stay until my partner, my teammate, comes into my life. I risk rejection, humiliation, loss, but in the end, I gain humility, courage, and strength. I am proud of those moments I was strong enough to put my best foot forward and attempt to go after something I wanted. We only have a limited supply of time on this planet, and it's about time we started going for what we want.
I would merely suggest that we just choose not to settle. We choose to stick to our plans, stick to ourselves and hold on to the idea that love is out there. We shouldn't lower our standards or trade in our integrity for the gratification of our temporary physical and emotional wants. Because if we aren't careful, we'll find something that will be just the thing we promised ourselves we wouldn't get.
The worse thing we could do is to find a life but miss out on what it feels like to truly know love.
As a final thought, I think that many of us love romantic movies because it paints a picture of what real love is and for just a moment, we get to see a brief glimpse of a powerful feeling. For example, in the movie "City of Angels" one of the most poignant moments come after the death of Maggie (Meg Ryan). Seth (Nicholas Cage) gives up his life as a sort of angel to be a human to share his life with his love. In a particularly emotional moment, a scene finds Seth go into a store and we see the pain on his face as he puts pears into a shopping basket, each one like a haunting memory of the love he had lost. He is asked if he had to do it all over again, would he change anything. His reply is simple, "I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it. One. "
That is how I feel about love. And I am willing to risk embarassment, rejection, and heartache to get it again. I just sometimes wish the journey to get there was a little easier and the path a little less rocky. But in the end, it is about finding love, not in the trials it took to get there. So life finds me always here, my gentle heart still hopeful, my soul still willing to be touched. And so, I keep waiting ...