Hello dear readers! Today I am launching a new weekly feature, for which I am still seeking a snappy title, with the hopes that it will help me to be with you on a more regular basis than say, once every two months. I will be sharing a quote with you that I find interesting, inspiring, or thought provoking and simply musing about it a bit, and of course welcoming your musings as well. The patient and very brilliant Emily deserves all the credit for coming up with the idea.
This week’s quote is more on the funny side, and is in honor my–successful–trip back to the States for Christmas:
Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia. –Judith Viorst
It speaks to me, and not only because I am sincerely thankful not to have been stuck in a holding pattern over Philadelphia (‘specially as I flew into Pittsburgh). It also speaks to me because I’m a bit skeptical about falling in love. Certainly it must be a pleasant thing (and in comparison to a tight girdle or an automobile accident, downright fabulous) but it honestly sounds exahausting, and the first throes of love are never what I’m looking forward to when I look forward to the end of my perpetual singleness. (Though perhaps this attitude is partly to blame for that circumstance – when I recently explained my disinclination for falling in love to a friend, he immediately replied: “someone’s going to end up a spinster.“ Hmm.) There is just something about the obsessive, uncontrolled nature of romantic love that does not appeal to me. I don’t want to only be able to think of one person, want to be near him every minute, make relatively dumb decisions for his sake. My tendency towards maintaining self-control makes such a state fairly undesirable.
That being said, love is something I really value – not love as romantic, fleeting, but love as giving, choosing, sacrificing, lasting. Not love at first sight, but rather the idea that love, like friendship (to quote dear George Washington), is “plant of slow growth“ which grows through difficulties, through getting to know one another better, through sharing your time and thoughts and weaknesses and strenghts. Love in which true friendship is a large component.
So, those are my musings. How do you feel about falling in love? Tight girdles? Flying? Snow? Fuzzy socks? A title for this feature? I’d love to hear what you have to say.
Notes From the Sisterhood of Perpetual Singleness 