True Love

As the weather gets warmer and the radio plays Journey, Chicago and other band’s love ballads non-stop, I cannot help but think of the summer I spent with the only guy I was ever in love with. I guess it kind of tarnishes the good memories when I remind myself that he treated me like shit. But that is besides the point, and also the reason most men and women stay in abusive relationships for so long (because whether you want to believe it or not, there are some good times mixed in between the bad ones).

Today my aunt told me about a documentary she was watching on the actress Dolores Hart. I had no idea who Dolores Hart was, but then my aunt told me that she was an actress, and why I had never heard of her. Back in the 1950’s and 60’s Dolores Hart was a rising star in Hollywood. Engaged to be married and at the height of her career her life seemed perfect until one day, while visiting Italy, it took a very unexpected turn. While in Italy, she met Pope John XXIII. This encounter inspired her to quit acting, sell off her worldly belongings and dump her fiancee to join a convent. She has been a nun ever since.

I have thought of doing something similar from time to time. I always felt spiritually compelled- but compelled enough to live a life of celibacy and service? Sometimes I feel like I am already there (without an official title, of course). Despite my pleas with the universe, miracles are still like seedlings and do not sprout in timely enough to suffice me. I do not think I am greedy. It has just been a long and arduous journey and with my little dog getting ill, it’s about to get worse.

Dolores Hart was engaged to be married when she joined the convent. Her wedding dress was being sewn together, her fiance, an architect, had already planned and began the construction of their future home and then everything came to a screeching halt. What happened to the guy? He moved on and dated other people, well, he tried to. Her fiance could not move on. In fact, he never moved on. They are 80-something years old today and he still visits her every day at the convent. They are obviously some shade of platonic, but this man never stopped loving her. He was not able to put his feelings for her behind him and every date he went on after their break up was in vain. He eventually gave up and gave in to devoting his life to a woman who was devoting her life to God.

Ah, don’t you wish we could all find that kind of love? I do. Everyone deserves that kind of love, but how many people are ready to receive it? I am sure that if we all got this kind of opportunity more than half of us, if not more, would turn it down for one reason or another. This is why people don’t bother. Instead they eat ice cream, drink vodka, or sit out from relationships altogether to focus on their pets. Ice cream is reliable, alcohol is reliable, pets are reliable and dating…not so much. 

How do you bring this kind of love into  your life if you don’t already have it? You can only work on yourself so much….

When you get to a really good point in your life physically, emotionally, financially, mentally, spiritually, and still have nobody or the wrong people continue to show up, it starts to feel like your efforts are worthless. Yes you should be happy and proud of your accomplishments, things you did for yourself not to attract others, but when all is said and done and you are still alone regardless of your efforts, things start to seem completely out of your control and that’s because they are. Has this happened to you? Are you ignoring the obvious? Does God want you all to himself to serve a greater purpose? I’m not so sure, but I do know that this is why I work so much. It seems my own productivity is the only thing I have control over. Not the outcome but the input.

I anticipate that my little dog is not going to be around much longer. This sucks. He is my best friend and like a son to me, really. He actually acts like a child when we go out in public. He is embarrassed to be around me in front of other people. No, I’m not joking. If we are out and I tell him how cute he is or how much I love him, he pretends not to hear me. Sometimes, when he is on his leash, I pretend I am going to pick him up, because he hates that too, in public. He quickly scatters as far away from me as possible. It makes me laugh every time. In public he pretends to be a tough guy but when no one is around he sits by me for hours and listens to me play music on the guitar or piano. Maybe he’s a captive audience, maybe. I’d like to think he is listening willingly. I wonder what I will do with myself when he was gone.

In the end, I suppose that you cannot change your destiny. It seems cruel that the people who have the opportunity for this love do not always get to take advantage of it. Dolores Hart didn’t in favor of serving something she valued more than romantic love. My cousin’s fiance had this kind of love and says that he “will never find anything like it again.” He may be right. My cousin died last month at age 28 from cancer. Why don’t the people who get this pure type of love get to keep it? And why do the ones looking for it never seem to come close? What cruel twist of fate is this?

Yes, so I kind of have no idea what point I’m trying to make here- but it seems that Dolores Hart’s and my cousin’s fiances saw something in them that they could not find in anybody else. Like the picture above says, “Real men don’t love the most beautiful girl in the world but the girl who can make the world most beautiful.” I think this is why they love and will continue to love them and nothing can or will get in the way of that, not death or vows of celibacy or even marriages to God.

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