Posted by Isaac | Posted in Life | Posted on 12-13-2001
Time after time, I see people whining for days or weeks on end that they can�t tell someone that they�re in love or just that they wanted to go to lunch with them next Tuesday. And then there are the ones who agonize over little choices and whether or not they should get more committed. They worry that they�ll get hurt or rejected or that things won�t work out, and it pushes them toward stagnation. In a word, quitcherbitching.
Sure, they might get scared off. And sure, even if it happens you might get hurt tremendously. And things might not work out. That is all true. Hell, that person could turn out to be the worst thing that has ever happened to you.
And you know what? I don�t care. Tell them anyway. Go to the next level if your intuition suggests it might be possible. Take every opportunity that offers itself, because there�s a little secret about good things and bad things that a lot of people take their whole lives to realize.
If you ever look at the average 50 year old middle-class person, and you have some shred of creative imagination and intelligence, you�ll be appalled. An almost-sexless relationship, a job at some moderately-paying office, a couple of kids who never call, and a life devoid of sparkle, devoid of anecdotes about anything more fascinating than that time Erica got chickenpox and gave it to everyone in the house. They haven�t really lived. And there�s a huge reason. They�ve had risk-free existences.
Bad Things will happen. No matter what you do, they will come and sneak up on you. Sometimes, they�ll even be Horrible Things. You can�t stop them. They�ll invade your life and you will just have to cope and deal and grow stronger because of them. Good Things, though, are a different story. Good Things don�t �just happen.� You have to work for them and sometimes, you have to work hard.
And so a Good Thing has come along. An Amazingly Good Thing. An incredibly wonderful person, the best person I have ever ever known. And I fell in love, and I fell in love fast. So fast, in fact, that I�m certain it would have scared the vast majority of people I know. It didn�t scare me, though, and to my initial surprise it didn�t scare him, either.
And this amazes me even more about him. And when I felt closer to him, he felt closer to me. When I realized I loved him, he realized he loved me very, very soon after. Each time we talked, we felt closer.
I�m more in love than I�ve ever been, and I�m not even afraid to share that. I am doing something entirely insane, and I�m loving every second of it. It�s better, I know this by experience, to wish you hadn�t gone and done something than to wish, after the opportunity has faded, that you had.
It could go horribly, horribly wrong. This is entirely true. But I will not regret it no matter what. My key to telling someone I�m in love with them (and I haven�t even told him this, as I write it) is this. If I told them, and the next day, they ripped my heart out and tore it to shreds, would I wish I�d never met them? If my answer is yes, I don�t tell. But if I�d have no regrets, I tell them. And I never look back.
Don�t ever look back. Don�t ever stop yourself in the middle of the road because you can�t decide which way to turn and don�t spend too much time looking in your glove compartment for a map. Odds are it�s out of date anyway, and besides � getting lost sometimes leads to more interesting places than the initial destination.