It Always Gets Better

In August, my husband and I attended a concert as part of our anniversary celebration. The band played one of its hits, “Marry Me.” and all throughout the audience, couples stood, swaying and singing the lyrics. Behind us sat three twenty-something women who kept cooing about how sweet it was, to see the people singing as though there were no other people at the concert. “It’s very romantic.” one said to the other. Honestly, I looked around and wanted to tell them, “It is, and what’s more, it’s just fun.” Most of the couples were older. The air felt like a mixture of witness, present joy, future hope, and evidence of years of faith. We keep discovering as we go, the best is yet to come. Thirty-four years and ten children, two cancers, and all the everything of life, has not dampened the joy or the necessity of seeing each other smile every day. Each day is the better vintage.

Romantic sensibilities are in short supply these days. Additionally, acts of emotional intimacy, when public, are vetted and weighed by a world of cynicism, anger, and suspicion. All actions are filtered through past trauma, present loneliness and examined to ensure there is originality, intent, consent, and acceptable timing. I thought of the spinster Aunt Charlotte in “A Room With a View,” and her prevention of the budding romance between George and Lucy. She nearly destroys the couple’s chance at happiness by imposing her own opinion on all things.

Simone Biles posed for the camera with her husband wearing her Olympic medal and scores of internet furies declared the wrongness of his sporting her award. It didn’t matter that she put it on him, he was hurting her moment to shine. Likewise, a public proposal earned the scorn of the internet for putting undue pressure on the woman to assent, and for robbing again the Olympian of the spotlight by asking for her hand. The collective critical eye of the internet does not see into hearts, but pretends to know better than even those in the moment, as to what the right course of action might be in any and all relationships. It loves to scold.

Romance requires permission to be over the top, creative, and impulsive. It is not vetting with the world for approval, but with the singular person. It withers under the gaze of a Palantir world, because it is no longer seeking its original object –the beloved, but approval for approaching the beloved. The individuals cannot engage in courtship while the world is holding court, having already found someone guilty of something.

The world needs better.

The sight of you singing or dancing or dining with your beloved will hearten others. Love is still possible. Joy is ever present. Your love will grow their hope in the possibility of one day being either the singer or the sung to. It will also bolster others to have faith that holding on together results in a better vintage as time progresses. The world is starving for that fruit that is always in season. We need to be the servers of that feast by our lives.

Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta counseled, “if you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” The domestic church requires nothing less than the whole hearts of the mother and father. Go home and love your spouse, and make sure the world knows you love your spouse, without making the display of loving your spouse, the purpose for your display. It’s rather like prayer. Intention and action, witness by doing, without doing to be witnessed. Let the world know you love this singular person with all your heart, intentionally, creatively, unceasingly, and sometimes with a touch of silly that is just for your spouse.

Go, be romantic. The one you think the world of, will thank you, and the One who made the world, will bless you, and the world will wonder at the joys you know that it longs for.