TRUE LOVE

True Love. We hear this term all the time, but what actually is it? As my pre-teen daughter relays all of the school crush news and who is "dating" whom (can it really be dating if they don't even talk to each other on the playground, but instead lurk through very vague text messages????), it makes me recall all of my past relationships. I think we can all remember that special high school significant other whom we thought at some point we would marry, perhaps penciling his name entwined with ours in a series of hearts all over our Algebra II book cover. There have been many loves in my life in high school and college and of course some major infatuations (which must have been so high on the infatuation scale, that I knew even back then that it was not love). Don't worry you will remain nameless to the world!

But have you ever experienced a time when you let your true love go, knowing that it was the right thing for them while maybe not for yourself? Cameron and I went to see Will Smith's Hancock movie today- yes I know it came out last summer, but we found it at the $1 movies- hmmmn, well now its the $3 movie, but anyway , I digress. In the movie, we see an immortal love, in which in order to live, the two lovers must sacrifice self in order for the other to exist.

How excruciating it is to let the love of your life (up to that point any way) go because that is what is best for him or for the situation. What courage it takes to do what John Hancock did at the end of the movie: to leap off the top of a building hoping that he would be destroyed or at the very least be carried away so that Angel (Mary) could live. She lay dying on the hospital gurney, her heart flat-lining, the electric paddles slapping her lifeless body off the table until.......... Until his ultimate sacrifice.

The novel that I have been working on deals with a number of issues, but the underlying theme that unites them all, is the notion of true love and sacrifice. Here's something that I included as a journal entry for one of my main characters:

An Invitation to Join the Dance

Take my hand and place it in yours

Intertwine our fingers so that I can hold onto you

Forever

Close your eyes and listen to me very carefully

You are very, very precious to me

You are my heart and my soul and my everything

I want to spend the rest of my life with you

I want to wake up every day and go to sleep every night

Having witnessed your smiling face, your laughing eyes

I want to make you my wife

The queen of my life; the holder of all that is good in the world

I want to be with you forever

I want “yes” to be the sweetest word that I will ever hear

I love you.

Here's to all those courageous people in the world who have walked away from the love of their lives. I hope you found another love, another situation, a new heart.

PEACE