Love As A Concious Decision

Did you ever have a lightbulb moment?  Someone makes a comment and suddenly that comical image appears above your head and sheds 150 watts of brilliant, insightful light on a thought you’ve been struggling to understand for decades.

When I returned to school several years ago, I didn’t have the first clue about the Professors at the College.  I had returned with the intention of obtaining access to a highly revered nursing program.  The first semester back, I decided to take classes I knew I could handle so that I could get used to the demands of being a single parent, who held a full time job and attended school.

I lucked out.  My English Professor was one of the best in the world.  He is the type of teacher that believes that teaching is more than giving you notes.  Dr. Snyder believed in prompting independent and deep thought.

On the first night of class, his announced that there was one perfect being, and He wasn’t sitting in our classroom.  Dr. Snyder did not give A’s.  Rather than allowing my bubble to burst, I worked hard and opened my mind to endless possibilities I would not have conceived six months earlier. 

I discovered many things in this class.  My love of Shakespeare and ability to analyze his works has me convinced that I had to have spent time with the man in a former life.  I discovered that I wrote well, that I thought deeply and that being a nurse was not what I was meant to be.

Most importantly on that first night, Dr. Snyder, while discussing the deeper meanings in works of literature brought up the novel Tess D’Ubervilles.  An eighteenth century french work, it was rather racy for the time period.  A peasant becomes impregnated outside of marriage and gives birth to a bastard son.  When she breaks free of her servitude and the “employer” that fathered the child, she meets a man and they are eventually married.  Tess hid her son for the duration of the relationship and finally revealed his existance after the marriage. 

Her husband was so infuriated that he left her.  She returned to a life of servitude, financial struggles and miserably low social status.

Many years later, her husband returns to the village.  Tess cordially welcomes him into her home, preparing his meal, a warm bath and his bed.

He asked her then “How can you treat me so kindly after what I have done to you?” 

Tess simply replies “Once having decided to love you, I will love you forever”

That is one of the greatest lines in Literature.  Love is a conscious decision.  It is not something we stumble or fall into.  It is something that grows, that forgives and most importantly…endures.

That night Dr. Snyder changed my life.  I knew that I would never again settle or mistake attraction for love.  I knew that when I did give of myself, it would be one hundred percent, and it would be forever.

I attained that desperately sought after A, but more importantly I have learned to look beyond the words, into the mind of a writer, and into my own soul.

Sometimes Your Prince Turns Into A Frog

Forty brings about a lot of change in most people.  It is a time where our minds begin to wander and wonder what might have been.  We long for contact with old friends, and when it is made you never know what you will find.

It is also a time when we assess life and question the decisions we have made and begin to take action to change them.  The discovery I made in this process is that there is a reason for everything. 

After twenty years of not speaking, my first love contacted me.  Curious, I flew off to another state to meet him, and it was incredible.  Looking in those blue eyes, with the eyes of a sixteen year old who was still blushing in his presence was novel.  Those eyes killed me when I met him at the age of 12, and years later, they still held that magical power.

At the age of 40, I had a ten year old child, was divorced and life consisted of work, child, work, child and did I mention work, child?  The trip began an adventure, and a transformation.

Eventually other events in life sparked a move to his new hometown.  Two years had passed since that first meeting and I now had a more sober view of life.  Time passed and the honeymoon was always there, but the commitment never came.  I had moved on and grown, and I finally realized that I was still dealing with the same man that ran off breaking my heart twenty years earlier.

I did learn though, that I am capable of many things, of loving adventure, of standing on my own two feet, of making decisions to change.  I learned to feel my fear and face those things I had to face anyway.

At the age of 46, I have finally become comfortable with  the prince being a frog but I have retained the crown jewels!