Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
There is someone out there for everyone.
True love exists.
We’re all familiar with these sayings. They’re our excuses. Yes, he’s a dork, but he has an amazing sense of humour and a great chest; I’m not going to settle for that vapid model, there’s someone better yet to be found; They just weren’t “the one”.
Juliet looked to like with Romeo, and together they became one of the greatest and best known couples in the world.
In the ABBA song Lay All Your Love On Me they sing ‘a little small talk, a smile and baby, I was stuck’. Surely this was the case with the star-cross’d lovers.
One glance was all it took.
No matter how often we say we aren’t waiting for fairy tale love, the stuff of knights and ladies, at some point, perhaps frequently during our lives, we find ourselves imagining the ‘perfect’ romance.
Our eyes meet across a crowded room and we are instantly aware that this is the person we wish to spend the rest of our lives with. The chemistry in the air crackles as we fly across the room and take the other in our arms.
I readily admit to (frequently) indulging in this fantasy. Although I am completely aware that ‘real life’ is not a fairy tale it doesn’t stop me from thinking about how wonderful it would be to be swept off my feet by a kind, intelligent, funny (and hopefully incredibly gorgeous) handsome prince.
Preferably, all this will occur while I am wearing a fabulous, one-of-a-kind gown, possibly whilst dancing in a luxurious garden, the summer air filled with the scent of roses.
Like it or loathe it, Gone With The Wind’s Rhett Butler had the right idea when he told Scarlett ‘you should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how’.
However, I am rarely able to completely immerse myself in this attractive fantasy before my inner cynic rears her ugly, obnoxious head. This girl doesn’t believe in true love, arguing that what people call ‘love’ is simply a confusing cocktail of lust, longing, foolishness and infuriating head rushes caused by meddlesome, uncontrollable endorphins.
Overuse of adjectives aside, I must grudgingly admit that this girl has a point. Believing that being with a particular person will make you happy by association is, arguably, part of the supreme naivety we employ to help us get up in the mornings. In my sensible moments, I like to believe that although the heart may control the blood that pumps through our veins, in a civilized society it is our brains that are the true rulers of the world.
Besides, as poster children go, Juliet and her Romeo are not the best, unless you are advocating underage sex and impulsive suicide. But it’s the teenagers’ deaths that truly capture our romantic attention. Sure, Romeo’s balcony courtship is beautifully poetic, and the way the pair leaps straight into marriage is fairly sweet. Yet it’s the fact that they cannot abide living in a world without the other that truly drives our passion for these two. They have been in love for barely a fortnight yet they are sure of their feelings.
Truly, if there is a heaven, I would much rather enter it moments after the love of my life does, knowing he will be waiting at the gates for me, than to live for twenty years alone once my love is gone.
Foolishness or not, I won’t stop searching for ‘true love’. My soulmate may live in a bark hut in Kenya
