For All Eternity (or, In Pursuit)

Love at first sight. So long as we both shall live. Happily ever after. In the wake of people like Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, and Bill Clinton, those words sound very incongruent.

But do those words, or phrases, ever exist in a world where they are not passé?

I had the pleasure of dining with a couple this week who had celebrated their ruby anniversary within the last year. Individually, they were charming and delightful people. But together, they were each other’s true complement. They understood what the other was thinking in advance of it being spoken. Their eyes lit up when one another told a familiar story. They were the couple growing old together, not unlike the happy couple in the rowboat in Made of Honor.

It doesn’t help at all that I am nearing the end of re-reading the Twilight series and its perpetual chatter about people finding their one true love… their eternity.

But that makes me wonder. Is there one true love, a perfect match or complement, to each one of us out there? And how do we know if we find that person? Or are there more than one? What happens if we marry the wrong person first? Is Gov. Sanford an example of that? What if his true complement really was the woman in South America? I would say that he is blessed (a) to have found her, and (b) to have realized it. The cheating on his wife thing is another topic (well addressed by Ms. Nikks recently).

The pursuit for love is seemingly long and arduous. People (couples) take leave of the pursuit in their own time. But I still wonder, when I look at people I know, if their pursuit was prematurely interrupted… or if they, in fact, stopped correctly. Fulfilled. And complete.

I wish us all the complete destination in our pursuit. I wish us the ruby anniversaries and the so long as we both shall live. And I hope 2010 is full of complements.

Happy New Year!

~M