We've got it all wrong all this time. We thought love is something that we see in couples spending their Saturday night together at the mall, or enjoying some fine wine at a French bistro. We thought love is supposed to be what we see in romantic movies. But, well, this is reality. You're not Meg Ryan, and that guy, he's not Tom Hanks. Hell, even their own love stories weren't as beautiful as what they had in Sleepless in Seattle! (Let's face it. Sleepless in Seattle has one of the most impossible story in the entire romantic movie universe. There are coincidences, sure. But God doesn't work in such a way that's really... God-ish. If He did, no one would be atheist)
But maybe, just maybe, we have to see love in those old couples who have stayed with each other since they can't even remember when. "Oh, when was that... World War II? Hitler was still a mere journalist." And yet, here they are today, right in front of us, the entire population that has to view love as something that people play with. There are people who were married for less than 24 hours. Or 72 days. Or perhaps they've survived years of marriage, along with each other's philandering ways. Those facts; those bitter realities that we knew today in our generation, are what makes us look up to ridiculous romantic comedies. You know what, love isn't as easy as spending your summer learning Spanish in an exotic city near Barcelona. You don't find it right when everything in your life seems to be so good but you had your heels got stuck in the middle of the road. No. Life isn't all sugar and spice, and love doesn't always come to be the cherry on top.
I have seen some really old couples who still love each other, or at least one of them still love the other one the way they used to; perhaps even more. It's probably because they're older now, so they need each other more in times of sickness or something. But no, it's not like that. It's... it's literally loving each other unconditionally. Skins may wrinkle and beauty fades, but love? It's not physical. It doesn't have to age.
I know a husband, who has the same profession as his wife, and has been married for about four decades now, still talk about his wife as if he was a boy who just won a trophy. He still talks about her as if she was the greatest woman in the world, and no other woman, not even man, can do what she's able to do. He doesn't care if Marie Curie found radioactive or Angela Merkel still reigns as one of the most powerful woman in Europe, or that Oprah should be a monarch in America. He doesn't give a fuck. But he knows that his wife has a higher degree than him in his education. That she has achieved more awards than him. And that above all, she is his. The thing that's really rare in men, other than a bank account as big as Warren Buffet's, is that they can genuinely be proud of what his woman can do. That he loves to see her spread her wings and fly. That even after all these years, after all those opinions and negativity towards marriage and women and the theory about the impossibility of growing old together, he still sees her in the same way when he fell in love with her. That even after a lot of things have changed along the way, in the end, he keeps coming back to that point where they fell in love. Where they found each other.
Looking at him, at his type of man, would always put things in perspective for me. That some love actually works. That there is still love in a lifetime of marriage, not just the neediness of each other. That not every love has to be like in romantic movies. And that after all, the rain will only makes the flower grow.
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