Wandering around on the platform waiting for the train to Lewes to emerge from the tunnel at St Leonards Warrior Square Station, I noticed a big wall poster announcing the opening of Love Story the musical.
Love Story! That took me back forty years! Everyone in our school was reading it. So beautiful. So passionate. So sad. In fact so beautiful was it, that it caused me to suppress out of sight the puzzled misgiving I felt – but… but surely… but surely love doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry…
Of course it doesn’t.
Quite the reverse.
Love means having to say you’re sorry more than you ever imagined possible. Love means learning to see things from the other person’s point of view and letting your pride tumble into the dust and not bothering to waste your time going to get it back.
Love means letting go of things that really did matter to you quite a lot because the other person matters to you more.
Love means getting over yourself and settling for reality. Love means accepting that if the other person still drinks their tea like Darth Veda (slurrrp… Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!) until they drop dead at 94, well that probably doesn’t matter so very much in the grand scheme of things.
But whatever else it means, love means being willing to say you’re sorry over and over and over again.
In Buzzfloyd’s house, she says, they have been working on ‘unqualified apology’; dispensing with ‘I’m sorry, but…’ and just stopping without going further than ‘I’m sorry.’ She says it is transformative.
The Plain way is not Plain, without humility. Humility is not humble, without being willing to say ‘I’m sorry’
Love Story. ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’ However did it manage to run and run and run, turning on a one-liner that is so patently obviously untrue?
8 comments:
You and I were thinking about this at the same season in our lives. I was going to say the same "time", but my Love Story thoughts were last week and yours were today, so "season" seemed more accurate. I want to learn to always care about the other person more, more than I care about my own pride or about being right. Nice to see what you write, Ember, and nice to see your photo, reminding us that you are with us. :)
Who is this Darth Veda character, and is he related to Darth Vader?
I absolutely agree with you, and am often amazed that it can be so hard to do. You'd think loving someone would make it easy to act like you love them, but it can be so costly to give ourselves away like that and open up to the possibility of being hurt.
I like this picture of you, you look like a troll.
I had the same trouble with that book. Bet it's responsible for untold misery.
The makers of that movie had to be targeting mostly teeny boppers. Oh, the stupid ideas I had about love when I was a teen! Anyway, it just reinforced that silly belief that the gooey sweet lovey dovey stage stays that way for ever. I heard some christian marriage counselor on radio say yesterday that this particular stage lasts about 2 yrs. I don't think those people in that movie had that long together
We all were reading it, too, here and watching it, not once, but twice. Same for that other one with Barbara Streisand, The Way We Were. We all cried and cried. Goobers, weren't we??
Hi Julie - :0) Yes I think you blogged about Love STory didn't you? Probably set me off thinking about it already before I saw the poster.
Hi Buzzfloyd :0) - You mean Darth Veda can't even spel his own name? He's American, insn't he! That's what it is! Vader, eh? I shall have to remember. I look like a troll in real life too. It took work, but I have achieved it.
Hi Ganeida - untold misery - gosh, yes, I bet you're right; I hadn't thought of that!
Hi Joanie - I have found that 2 yrs thing very helpful. Married people all need to know that. Then if they fall in love with someone else while they are married, they can know that if they don't act on it, in 2 yrs it will go away by itself anyway. Like a verruca. x
My Badger, who is still on holiday, is lying around in bed here at the disgracefully late hour of 7.30am. He says love means saying sorry even when it isn't your fault.
Thinking about Joanie's comment re the 2 years, after which love changes. It is quite true; but I've been married to the Badger for four years now, and I would say the love between us now is richer and happier than at the beginning. Mind you our Blossom Time was blighted by Family Frosts, so it's a bit hard to tell - I like these calmer waters anyway.
I told Bruce, my husband, what i said about the 2 yr thing and he pouted and said " you mean you are not all sappy and gooey in love anymore?" You know, I think that 2 yr thing is for some people, not all. Bruce and I had my 3 yr old when we fell in love and we told her we were all gettin married - so she wouldn't feel left out. She thought it was so cool. Anyhow, we had BIG problems at a young age when we got married. We both lost our jobs of 5 yrs from lay offs, job, a deep recession, lived in a rodent infested rental, a child to care for, Lindsay and my transition to rural life from city, and within one month of marriage, a baby on the way. Within that supposed 2 yr time of gooey lovey doviness, we had buried a daughter who died at 4 1/2 months of age and a son who was born prematurely, at about 7 months. She died of SIDS and our son died of triasomy 18, a genetic birth defect. I then plunged into the bottle and worked on my already developing alcoholism. We were dirt poor for 6 yrs, one year we had no gas put in our tank to heat or cook with and used kerosene only, cooked only with a microwave. And I was a stinking drunk by the end of it all. My dear husband cared for me and Lindsay and the story of how the Lord healed me is for another time. But He also blessed us with 2 more children eventually. This all reminded me of the public health nurse of our county who came to visit upon the death of our daughter to let us know what kinds of programs there were for us out there. You know, counseling etc... . She told us the statistics showed that after the death of a child the risk of divorce was very high - can't remember the number. Anyway, 11 months later that poor woman had to come back and give us the same talk essentially, only this time she said there were no statistics for a couple losing 2 children, but the chances of us staying together were nearly none. We sure defied that! That was all 28 yrs ago. REAL love is hard to describe, but the thing we felt was as much love, whatever it is, for each other as we did ourselves. It got us through those tragedies and more later. And in the calmer times it IS so wonderful!! We are still very, very lovey dovey. I am so blessed.
Joanie
:0) And bless you, Joanie, for sharing something of your story with us here. x
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