Love

There is a saying, "Love Conquers all" but what a lot of people don't tell you when you are young is that this is a spiritual truth and not a pragmatic truth about someone you are in love with deeply. Many people including myself have broken because of this. But just because you are broken upon the rocks of life doesn't mean you should just go kill yourself. No. I have found that maybe there are 100 potential mates for every person on earth. However, you have to go out and find that person. And even then, you have to be practical about that relationship.

For example, I used to know people who would say to me things like, "When you meet the right person you will hear bells and you will know and everything will be perfect after that!" I'm sorry that is just bullshit. You may hear bells and you will know and likely you might get laid and you might even live together. But one thing I can tell you. It won't all be perfect after that unless you both are grown up enough to make it be perfect. Life is never perfect all by itself unless you are out in nature watching the wilderness. Yes. That can be perfect. But living with any other person but yourself is always a compromise and always a job and always at least (emotionally speaking) about 10 times as hard as owning any business. Yes. I'm saying running any business is 10 times easier than making any long term relationship work long term.

For example, at age 63 I would say I have been seriously in love about 11 times or more in my life. Then if I tried to narrow it down further I would have to say that I was deeply in love "at Least" 2 to 3 times. But in the end did any of those relationship work long term? no. they didn't. And there's the rub. Even if you are deeply in love you might go out with them or even live with one or more of them and you might even have a child with someone you are deeply in love with but that has nothing at all to do with whether you will be with them 50 years from now. That is the sad truth of life.

Because in the end a relationship has to be practical to work long term. It really doesn't matter at all in the end whether you love someone or not if it simply is too impractical to work. Unless both of you are grownups and have what it takes (whatever that may be) it won't work.

Like my ex-wife said to me after 15 years of marriage, "Love just isn't enough to keep us together." What she was saying was even though she loved me that there were problems the two of us couldn't solve together." We used to call this "hard love" which meant to us the practical situations that almost kill us all but make us who we are if we survive to old age.

I am presently in a completely practical relationship. My wife is my best friend and sometimes we travel the world together and are very happy. We took my two daughters then 14 and 21 to Paris the October before last. It was amazing there in Paris and in Nice and in Monaco. We rode the high speed train from Paris to Nice. Amazing. We saw the Cote D'azure (French Riviera) and the azure blue ocean there. We rented a Mercedes and drove through Nice and Monaco. But this is a very practical relationship and very amazing. But it took me until my late 40s to get to as practical a relationship as this one. Love is important but unless both are practical too, no one can survive it long term.