Sophomore year of college, end of the school day. I go to the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat before I leave. I get my food, I find a table, I start to eat.
Across from me, there’s some girl having a pretty intense phone conversation with…someone. It’s not my business, I pay no mind. Finally, after a few moments, she finishes with a “FUCK OFF!” and hangs up.
There’s a brief moment of silence, then she looks right at me and this conversation happens:
Girl: “Are you in a relationship?”
Me: “Me? Ummm…no.”
Girl: “Have you ever been in one?”
Me: “Nope.”
Girl: “GOOD. Don’t ever, ever get in one. It’s not worth it. Too much goddamn trouble for someone who’s not worth it.”
That was about three years ago. In that period, I’ve seen a lot of good people get hurt after nasty ends to relationships. I’ve never told any of them this story, but every time another break-up happens, I think back to that girl and that phone call and that conversation.
And I think to myself:
“Y’know, maybe she was right.”
That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory….”
Amy Singley and Steve Smith were born on the same day in the very same hospital. Their mothers even shared a hospital room. Now, 23 years later, the Lehigh Valley couple is about to get married.
