nerdology.org

When one walks several miles to and fro, or when one is going to sleep, or when one lies his head on his dog’s tummy and thinks about the universe, one often formulates thoughts from an abstract organelle soup into solid cellular opinions. Sometimes one laughs at people.

Not that my opinion on love means much to anyone but myself, and not that I’ve had enough experience in the area to know everything about it, and not that my opinions won’t change as I grow older and more mature, and not that I intend to discuss the nearly limitless unique ways and circumstances and situations that lead to “true love” line upon line, but I’ve a few points I’d like to share to the world at large.

For all the intents and purposes of this particular disparagement, “love” means the type of love between a man and a wife, or a boyfriend and a girlfriend, or a man pining for a woman who gives little thought to him, or vice versa.

• Nobody under the age of 20 or 21 can possibly know what “true love” is.
• Many people still don’t know what “true love” is through their twenties, even if they are married.
• Those married people who still don’t know what “true love” is are in for a steep learning curve, which is sometimes the only way to learn.
• Some people who are 19 (very few) or 18 (still fewer) can sometimes begin to taste what love really is– taste, mind you.
• People who are really “in love” don’t talk to one another as if they’re both three years old or as if they’re both doggies.
• To really be “in love” with someone, one has to know that person for at least a year, though every circumstance is different.
• “True love” is less of an excitement than it is a comfort.
• “True love” is less of a physical attraction than it is an intellectual and personal one.
• “True love” is less about “me” than it is about “you”.
• “True love” is less “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyousomuch” than it is “Here– you look tired; let me take the baby” (in other words, “true love” is less goop than it is poop, to put it a tad bluntly).
• “True love” has so little to do with kissing and other such physical actions that it’s no wonder that 50% of marriages end in divorce these days and that most high school couples end in tatters and tears.
• “True love” doesn’t need to be pushed or prodded to continue to exist.
• “True love” does not exist in grade schools nor in community colleges.
• “Liking” a person begins with fireworks and doesn’t go much further than that; loving a person is a beautiful arrangement of chapel music, circus parades, thunderstorms, and devastating earthquakes, with the occasional Independence Day, 24th of July, New Year’s Eve, and Chinese New Year.
• “True love” can have its seeds in any place and at any age (though it still follows the above stipulations before it actually matures into something true).
• “True love” isn’t something that’s finally accomplished one week, and being married doesn’t end the courtship; once it’s realized, the definition for a couple’s “true love” changes and expands and grows each day.
• “True love” isn’t all hearts and flowers. It’s a lot of thistles and thorns, too, but these thistles and thorns are the most happily and patiently borne for the sake of the other.
• There is no such thing as “true love” between two men or two women.

I have the feeling that a lot of people who are 21 and younger will disagree with these ideas. Oh, well. You’ll probably agree with it more and more as you get older. There are those few, though, who never learn.

ADDENDUM (a few days later):

• Concerning kissing and other physical actions of the like: Kissing and etcetera should be a result of “true love;” “true love” is never the result of kissing and etcetera.