This is what my husband wakes up to in the morning.
Woof.
Retainer, Breathe Right nasal strips, wrinkles, tousled
hair, bags under the eyes … it's a perfect combination of age, fatigue and
weariness. And I'm not even wearing my dorky glasses.
The thing is, my husband has looked at this morning spectacle for nearly 20 years of marriage.
The thing is, my husband has looked at this morning spectacle for nearly 20 years of marriage.
And he loves me anyway.
(By the way … He? Doesn't look any more glamorous than I do. And yes, I love him too. Very much.)
You might come to the conclusion, based on the evidence presented, that
love is blind. After all, it was Shakespeare who gave us that phrase hundreds
of years ago and it has stood the test of time.
You've heard your girlfriends proclaim it as the root of a shattered relationship: "I was blind" ... to his cheating, lying, stealing, ___
[fill in the blank].
You hear it over and over in movies, books and plays. My favorite use of the phrase is in the 2003 movie, Under the Tuscan Sun, when Mr. Martini (the wonderfully understated Vincent Riotta - swoon!) comforts brokenhearted Frances (Diane Lane) by saying it in Italian - "L'amore e cieco" - and she responds, "Oh, 'love is blind.' Yeah we have that saying too." He tells her, "Everybody has that saying because it's true everywhere."
Oh Mr. Martini, how I love you. But I gotta call bullshit on that.
(pardon my profanity ... there's just no other way to say it, folks)
I do not believe that love is blind. Love - real, true, mature, honest love - is not blind at all.
Love sees.
Love sees us, the real us. It is about more than surface attraction. It sees right through our games, lies and facades. It glares through the walls we build around us. It stares unblinking at our pettiness, our crabbiness, our inner ugliness.
Love sears into our souls, straight to our vulnerabilities, our insecurities, our fears, our hurts, our failures and disappointments.
Love takes in our beauty. Basks in our laughter. Cheers at our victories. Forgives.
Love is about
acceptance, endurance. It is only with eyes wide open that we are able to fully and
completely accept one another in love. We see the imperfections and love one another anyway.
Yes, we sometimes choose to look away when we suspect someone we care about could hurt or wrong us. We turn away from ugly truths. We lie to ourselves. Ignore reality. We swim in a river of denial, choosing to jump in muddy waters, rather than wade deeper through the muck toward the truth. These are choices that we make to protect ourselves. That is not the same as being blinded by love.
And sometimes our loved ones hurt us, lie to us, deceive us. Devastating truths are revealed. Being blindsided is not the same as being blinded by love.
"Love is not a feeling; it's an ability," young Marty (Felipe Dieppa) to his girlfriend's father, Dan (Steve Carell), in the 2007 movie, Dan in Real Life.
Marty's right. To love one another - truly love one another - is a skill. It is something we are not always going to get right. But we must practice and master it with open eyes, open minds, open hearts and open arms.
Before I go, I will leave you with two things:
A less scary version of me.
And my source material for this post.
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