Love Lines

                                                                                                                                               

There are so many men in the world.  How is a woman supposed to choose just one?  How does a person sift through all the people they meet and settle on just one with whom to spend their nights and days?  After all, we meet so many faces and smiles and gestures, that it seems logistically improbable that anyone could choose correctly.  Yes, we can choose well in any given moment, but long-term?  Well, that’s another story altogether. 

So many men have floated into and out of my life.  That’s not a sex joke (although, I supposed it could be), but rather an observation about the transient nature of human beings.  We are always in the process of becoming who we are, so when we meet people, we are not yet complete.  I would argue that people never truly stop changing as individuals.  If my belief is valid, how probable is it that two people could continue in the same vein over the course of 10 or 20 or 30 years together?!  People who fall in love and remain in love throughout the various stages of becoming are incredibly lucky (and dedicated). 

Think about all the people who have smiled at you in your life, and you felt that pull.  You know the one I’m talking about.  That “yes” smile.  It’s an invitation.  Sometimes, we follow that smile; we engage and get to know that smile better.  That smile can turn into afternoons and evenings and longing and promises and heartbreak.  But you never know unless you follow that smile. 

I’ve followed it.  We all have.  I’ve been led down alleys of mystical happiness and bleak abandon.  That’s the whole point, isn’t it?  Potential and possibility are what keep people from throwing themselves in front of a bus every day.  No one would get up in the morning if life wasn’t worth living, and smiles lighten up all the dark corners of our lives.  Interpersonal connections are absolutely essential in life – something which I’m sure hasn’t changed since cave dwellers and hunter/gatherers roamed the earth. 

So, what happens when the face you chased down a week or a month or a year or 10 years ago looks across the table at you, over the meal laid out in front of you both, and the smile is gone?  The person across the vast expanse of table and water glasses and dinner is but a distant shadow of the person who drew you in?  Is it so bloody awful to just say so?  Is it so grossly socially unacceptable to just move on?  To say, “Listen, your eyes are no longer the eyes of someone I want to spend time with”? 

I think we all deserve honesty with our entrée. 

And I think we all deserve to have someone smile at us with genuine love, not heaped social expectations of making relationships work.   People are complex organisms with true feelings, not cutouts whose actions can be dictated through social mores.  Heart Lines, Love Lines, Life Lines are what capture our personalities and make us who we are.  Keeping to one person’s smile for an entire lifetime might be romantic, but it’s also unrealistic. 

I’m not saying that I wrongly chose any certain person, but that every person I did choose says something about my personality.  All of those people make up the sum of my parts.  Each person impacted me differently, for better or worse, and I wouldn’t replace any of them.  But I also think that we know when it’s time to move on, and that societal rules shouldn’t cloud our perception of right and wrong.  We are the sum of our mistakes and our successes, and even though we often don’t want to take ownership of our fate … it’s ours alone. 

Smiling is so much better than not.  Happiness might be elusive sometimes, but that doesn’t mean we should stop pursuing it.