A reflection

Reflection

I believe that love can make a difference. Yea, I know it sounds real cliché, but I believe it to be true. I would rather live in a world where people’s actions were dominated by feelings of love and compassion rather than what appears to be a world of hate and violence

When I was nineteen, I wanted to get married. Not necessarily right then, but at the time I was dating a wonderful girl who I had been friends with since I was twelve years old. Everything felt so right, it was my first serious relationship, and there was a lot of love there. We had even talked about it between us, late one night standing outside in the street during a cold drizzle holding one another in our arms talking about the future. Together we spoke of the small house, the big yard, the dog (or more than one even), and growing gray and wrinkled together while the breeze shifted the wet pine needles above us. It all seemed so right and we didn’t doubt it at the time.

Then a few months later, thanksgiving came around and she broke up with me. What was it that I had done? Was I not accepting enough of her? Was I not accepting enough of her feelings? Bingo. Apart from my father, I was the only other male in my family; no male cousins, uncles, or grandfathers. Even the family friends I grew up with had, you guessed it, only daughters! Combined with having only sisters and numerous female friends growing up, I thought that surely I understood women and what went through their head. Wow, was I ever a naïve college youth. Will I ever be able to realize women completely and truthfully? I hope so.

So we went our separate ways across the country and moved on with our lives, met and dated other people, and matured and progressed within ourselves. Reflecting now on those days, it would have been a mistake to get married so young with hardly any life experiences under the belt I wore to keep pants on my wiry waist. Dealing with problems within the relationships of my family and still trying to find my calling and my future, a limited metamorphosis was occurring within me and I didn’t even know it was occurring. Yet even now as I write this, I recognize it was for good. In the following years, I changed to become a different person than I was when I graduated high school and am grateful for that and the things I accomplished, as well as being grateful for the failures I experienced for the lessons I learned from them.

What is it then that I ultimately seek when I look for a woman? I look for love and compassion, kindness and respect, a sort of emotional capacity that often times I find I lack myself and hope through a companion can be gained in my life. There is a desire within me to have somebody to be there to tell me both when I’ve done right or wrong, been equitable or unfair, been honest or immoral. Often times it’s very difficult to have self-improvement when one doesn’t have a moral coach outside of the self.

Mostly, what I desire is to be able to have a true form of altruism within myself, a desire to live for somebody else with a slow burning passion. I want the desire to improve myself so that I can make somebody else’s life more clear and beautiful. What could be a greater form of humanity than to dedicate one’s life to somebody else?

(inspired by “This I Believe”)