What the world needs

Forgive the unpolished nature of this post, it's a short version of a piece I hope to write in full in the future.

A co worker of mine mentioned the other day at work that his parents had known each other since they were 10 years old.

Ten years old, and still together. He couldn't comprehend how two people could still be together after all the monumental changes that occur in a person's life over such a long period of time. It's a miraculous thing in our current world for two people to be together in a marriage all their lives when their relationship began in their twenties, let alone when they were ten. His amazement, from a purely secular standpoint, is completely justified. Even from a non-secular standpoint, his parents were doing fantastically well.

My ex fiancée left our relationship because she felt we both had changed into different people from those who had gotten engaged two years before. And she said to me that I must feel the same way.

I'm going to tell you the same thing I told her. I'm going to tell you what the world needs, the secret to love that lasts.

Love must transcend. I loved my fiancée, while she was my fiancée, with a transcendent love. This means that I didn't love her for any reasons. None whatsoever. There were things I valued in her, and things I frankly didn't like much at all. But I loved her all the same, regardless of what I liked or didn't like. This is the key. For a Romantic like myself, love must transcend all possible reasons, save perhaps only that that person is yours, your wife, your girlfriend, your husband, your boyfriend, your brother, your sister, your father or mother, your son or daughter. Your friend.

And the reason for this is simple. If I loved my fiancée because she was pretty, then when she stopped being pretty, my love would die. If you love your partner because he or she is sexually amazing, then when something happens to that ability, you're going to find your own love in conflict with the person it is directed to. If you love a person because of what they want to be, and their desire changes, as mine did, then you'll find yourself loving a person who doesn't exist. Because you never loved the person, you loved an aspect of the person.

If you love a person for a reason, or for reasons, then when changes come, when that person grows and matures, you're likely to find nothing but conflict. You can't love just the aspects of a person, or what you imagine that person to be. You have to love them as they are, which means transcending all reasons and impressions. You must accept that person as he or she is, always, and love them just the same. Then everything and nothing may change, but your love will not be shaken. You can grow and change together because your love is for a real person, and you can appreciate every new thing, instead of dwelling on those things that were or might have been.

Truly that's what the world needs. More of this transcendental love between people, and less of the shallow loves and lusts that people have mistaken for the real thing.