There is nothing more
beautiful, no event more
joyous than the birth of a
child. But, has our luck
ended as we hit number
seven?
It is said that there are three stages to true love; lust, attraction and bonding. Lust is the immediate reaction of desire; attraction individualises this to a person and bonding is the permanent force keeping two people together, out of a mutual desire of togetherness and enjoyment for one another’s company.
At 40, I have been searching for Mrs. Right for about 24 years — okay 26 years, just don’t do the math. I was an early starter. In my search I prayed that when I found her, I would find a woman who thought I, too, was her Mr. Right.
What if, in my search for all these years, I have missed it though, that Mrs. Right was in fact always ‘Mrs. Right Under my Nose’.
What if I have been with and lost Mrs. Right among my plethora of partners. Was I given a brain incapable of noticing and thus I have missed my soul mate? Has my love of my career driven me to insanity?
Or was I chosen to be single?
For a reason not yet clear to me, many famous people have grown old alone! Does this make them any less a person? Does this mean they have not found or felt love throughout their lifetime?
Does feeling love, mean we must remain with one person for eternity? Or does feeling love make us richer as long as we have at least felt it once in our lifetime?
Is marriage everything it is supposed to be? Does a piece of paper make you more ‘in love’?
If that’s the case, why do married people still cheat, fight and divorce? Why do married people look at ageing singles as the loser in life’s odd game of chance?
What if the real point of this game of life is to duck and weave your way around the obstacles only to end up at heaven’s gate as single, as the day we were born? What if the only ones allowed through the pearly gates are those who never married, suffering life by themselves?
I hope God congratulates me upon my arrival and gives me a hug and tells me, “Well done my son, you have suffered long enough; now come inside and feel all the love we have to offer, no one inside is married — eternity is happy hour!”
As I have stated many times, my life has been one of a continually travelled nomad. I chose a great career which transcends all boundaries of language and was lucky to be born in a country where visas have been as easy to achieve as arriving at any foreign country’s doorstep.
It is not like I have never found love and, yes, I do have my regrets. But I can’t help but believe that to love someone, even for a short time, is to show yourself an inner foresight; a clue along the road to life that lovers are like tour guides, to direct us, and not to live with and get bored with the journey.
There was of course ‘one’, an old Canadian girlfriend who was perhaps ‘THE ONE’.
Half Egyptian, half German, I loved both halves.
Unfortunately she was a free spirit and I lost that spirit to the wind after asking her to marry me. She is the only girl I have actually asked the direct question on hand and knee, probably the only one I ever will.
I remember, she laughed, kissed me passionately and
was gone.
“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” are the famed words of Alfred Lord Tennyson.
But is it not true that to be touched by an angel once, offers insight to one’s life, that otherwise we may search endlessly for? Sure I would give my left leg for her to return and marry me, but is a zebra still a zebra if we remove the stripes?
I would never have loved her had she not been such a free spirit and to tie her down to a commitment such as marriage would be removing those stripes. And I have no interest in funny-looking ponies.
For now, I’ll just continue walking down the road I seem to be on, enjoying life’s tour guides along the way. Perhaps my life is like the great quote from Star Trek, “maybe it’s not about the destination that matters, maybe it’s the journey”.
Getting nowhere in life has never been so much fun.
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