Great Days!

I have had some of the most amazing past few days, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I've spent the majority of my every waking moment, and many of my unconscious ones, with the most amazing and brilliant girl I know. It's kind of funny, the old adage, "It's always darkest before dawn" seems to be a proverbial truth.  Often times it seems to be the ability to endure through the rough that allows you to accept and experience the good.

I was having a conversation with Drew the other day, about sharing in the agony of defeat with the teams that you root for, being a crucial component to also sharing in the highs of victory. I've come to realize, this is a fairly global truth. In order to experience the happiness of success, you have to be willing to face the prospect of defeat. If you're not vested, if you're apathetic, then you don't care what the outcome is. For Drew, I used this analogy: If you didn't care about Alex (his girlfriend), then you wouldn't mind when she's sad, you wouldn't care when things go wrong with her parents, it wouldn't matter if she moved to Indonesia for all you'd care, but you've taken a vested interest in her. You've allowed for her to be every bit a part of your life as your family and close friends. It's because of that, that when you know she's struggling you care, you want to do something to fix it. Allowing yourself to be affected like that doesn't mean you only get that burden though, it means you also share in the gifts of happiness that are afforded to her. It's why when she succeeds, you feel a sense of pride and accomplishment as well. It's why she's able to make you happy, and why she's able to make you sad.

Marriages and relationships that don't work, so often seemed to be caused by a lack of ability for one party to affect the other. When one side becomes apathetic to the happenings of the other, you lose the mutual interest in the well being of the relationship. It's no longer an equal commitment, it's suddenly a lot more pain for one person, while a lot less for another. I guess that's what makes relationships such a worthwhile pursuit. They're scary, they're fragile, they're intimidating, but they're amazing, they're unparallelled in happiness and disappointment. They cause euphoria, and crippling pain.

I still don't know what I'm in, haha, and while the confusion is often times frustrating, if I take it at the level I explained, the litmus test tells me, I feel pain when something upsets her, and I feel great satisfaction when something makes her happy, and what more really can I ask for?