| Collegiate
gymnastics mixes the intense study of college with the intense training
of gymnastics. Balancing school and gymnastics might be enough, but
some look for a social life beyond. Somewhere I read that college
romances are three times the intensity of regular romances,
meaning that if two people have been seeing each other for four months
in college, it's like a year in the real world. True Love I don't know if that's true or not, but that's the way it seems. So imagine you're in a restaurant in Dinkytown or Stadium Village, overhearing a heated exchange: "Don't you know what today is?!?" "No. What?" "It's our anniversary!" "We've only been together for four months." "Exactly! That's a year in the real world. Happy Anniversary!" Three times the intensity is just an estimate. The point is that the more pressure you are under, the more your relationship has to get through. Of course, one love is not like another love. Your results may vary. I just read a book, True Love by Thich Nhat Hanh. I read the first half of the book in a hospital waiting room, while visiting a friend, which is a coincidence because two chapters were "Love Is Being There" and "Being There When Someone Is Suffering." Right, that's what I was doing. The book describes four elements of true love -- loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and freedom. It's not that I disagree with the author, all the darts he threw were aimed at the dartboard of love, but I think he missed the board. I think he hit the wall. The Wall Love can float, I know, but the dartboard of true love has to be on a wall of trust, understanding, communication, and time. And some people say that those things are love. Hardly. True love needs these things, but it's much more. These things are just the framework that holds love up off the ground. The wall has to be built. That's the tough part. You can't just be you and expect true love to have a good environment. Once the wall is built, it just has to be maintained. It's balance. It's balancing the needs in your life, prioritizing them to make sure that time and attention and understanding go where they are deserved. On Board True love is passion; it's a sharing, caring affection. It's the combination of the best of each of you. It's giving the best of yourself, and becoming a better person so you can offer more. True love is not normal. What I mean is, if you do what everybody else does and expect to reach true love... fugedaboutit. Because if you read the surveys, true love is more rare than anything. When you were a teen, or at least when I was a teenager, I was in the homes of tons of my friends. And their parents would bicker and snipe and say things to each other... and then, in almost a Shakespearean aside, tell me "That's not true," as if to say that the other spouse lives in a deluded world, and they like it that way. To get to true love, you both have to be willing to make things work for the two of you, without copying off of someone else's paper, without plagiarizing someone else's love. True love needs to be reinvented for each couple. "Today on How It's Made: True Love. For this episode, we leave the factories and assembly lines for the living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens of a few couples in Minnesota." Passion True love is fueled by passion. The passions of the individuals mix into the passions of the couple. The stronger and more varied the passions, the more passions for your love. The creation of your love should originate and be fueled by your passions. That's what makes the love unique. In his 1956 book The Art of Loving, Dr. Erich Fromm says that to practice any art, you need discipline, concentration, and patience -- certainly understandable from a gymnastics perspective. He also describes having faith -- believing in the potential -- and having courage -- the ability to take a risk. But even though he must have had a passion about The Art of Loving, he neglects to mention the passion as the impetus that puts the faith and courage in motion. It's passion and faith, aided by Fromm's discipline, concentration, and patience, that keeps respect in each other through arguments and misunderstandings. The shared passion keeps outward exploration, while maintaining an inward happiness. Once you establish the loving environment and meld your passions into true love, it's as easy and as natural as a giant. You can now live happily-ever-after. Happy Valentine's Day. For more about living happily-ever-after, read the novel, Hopes and Dreams: Stuck on AutoDrive. |
