Our hearts are extremely fragile things. In our lexicon of clichs, they race, pound, leap and feel like their jumping out of our chests. But most terrifyingly, they can break. Shatter. Get ripped out and stomped on. So why bother? Why go through the trouble of making awkward blitz conversation, having to actually sit down and talk to someone over a meal or go so far as to get emotionally involved when it could all come crashing down especially when it's so easy to hit the town and find someone to bump uglies with, no strings attached?
Well, as Erica Jong (author of Fear of Flying, the original and best chick lit) once said: "Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more." At the expense of getting all Carrie Bradshaw on you (okay, maybe it's too late for that), we're so afraid of making genuine connections that we don't take the time to make them at all.
Instead, we make up lame excuses for avoiding commitment: our classes are too demanding, we just want to bro out and, my most loathed excuse, the D-Plan. As in: how can I be expected to be in a relationship with someone I won't see for three to 12 months?
Pitted against the overwhelming benefits of a happy, long term relationship, however, a few months or even years apart is a tiny price to pay. Love is everything it's cracked up to be. Even lust the excitement you feel when you spot that certain someone from across a crowded basement or, brace your heart, see his or her name pop up in your inbox makes every day a little more exciting.
Even the shrill cry of your alarm clock on a freezing, hungover 10A morning isn't that scary when you have a warm body in bed next to you. It even makes you feel a little less guilty when you turn the alarm clock off, get back under the covers and nuzzle closer to your love. Yet we continue to write off commitment as impossible due to our hectic schedules or see relationships as things with artificial deadlines, lasting only as long as both parties are in the same zip code.
Look at some infamous couples who've survived decades apart; that puts to shame your 10 weeks in Paris.
We pride ourselves on being educated and well-read, but we clearly absorbed nothing from The Odyssey. Or maybe we were too distracted by Odysseus' epic journey (admittedly, fighting off the sexy sirens and six-headed Scylla is pretty sick) that we missed the tender love story. While he was off adventuring on the high seas, Odysseus' wife Penelope waited 20 years for him to return, turning down proposals from 117 suitors who bombarded her home. If she could do that, you can avoid the temptation of sweaty frat boys while your one true love is working in New York for one term.
How about Napoleon and his beloved Josephine? No time for a honeymoon when you're at war with half of Europe. Two days after their wedding, Napoleon left for Italy to lead the French army. In the meantime they wrote each other passionate love letters detailing the pain of being separated from one another.
Yup, real, handwritten love letters not just clever, pithy blitzes that we pretend take so much time and energy to craft. It's ridiculous to assume that we can't communicate across cities or continents with our overload of communication. Skype, for goodness' sake, we have Skype! For free, you can see and hear your beloved from any corner of the globe. Somehow lovers from days of yore managed to make it work without instant communication. You'd have to write a letter, wait weeks for it to be received and then another few weeks for your special someone's response to get back to you.
Despite our modern technology, we continue putting romance on the backburner, assuming maybe we'll find someone in the "real world" once we're free of silly Dartmouth conventions and serious Dartmouth demands on our lives. By doing so, we're selling ourselves short.
We're willing to spend four years building myriad skills critical thinking, leadership, and, yes, our pong skills but neglect the most fundamental of experiences: love. Love is truly what makes us human. Being in a relationship forces us to share our vulnerabilities, understand how to compromise and learn who we are as people in terms of how we relate to someone we care about. Even if it doesn't work out in the end (I didn't tell you before, but Napoleon and Josephine each had some torrid affairs during their time apart), a relationship gives you space to learn and grow like no other experience.
In The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut writes: "A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
During our time here, we're fortunate enough to be around some of the most interesting, driven and caring young people in the country definitely people who are worth loving.
