Your heart should be glad! at Ask Tony Isaacs: Featuring Luella May

Hi, welcome to the forum.

When I read your message, what I see is very little to worry over and much to be happy about. You have a gal you really like who thinks so much of you that she has opened her heart and told you, and trusted you with, something from the innermost depths of her soul. And yes, despite the best armor you could construct, you have discovered that you are mortal after all, and anger, jealousy and sadness have found a way in. But that simply means that you care. When examined for what such negative emotions are really worth in the true scheme of things, you will find that they are no more substantial than some uttered slight that is without substance and is soon blown away like dust in the wind.

Here is a page I made with help from an email I received not long ago to help put our mortal troubles in perspective.

http://www.tbyil.com/theuniverse.htm

We all make mistakes and do things we are not proud of - such is the fate of us mere imperfect mortals. It is not those mistakes that matter so much as what we learn from them and how we grow. I surely hope to God that I am not judged for the mistakes I have made nearly so much as for what I am doing now and what I do in the future. Perhaps you should look in your heart and ask yourself what are your feelings for this girl and, regardless of the past which we can never go back and re-do, ask what you think this girl is like today and what she will likely be in the days and perhaps years to come. If your feelings for her are strong, given that you have only known her a short time, and you have found that you like her qualities and company during the time you have been together, then forget the past and enjoy the present and let the future come what may, unburdened by such feelings.

I know how the male jealousy thing can work - many of us, including yours truly, can be such cavemen in that regard. Forget the old boyfriend. He too is history, merely a lesson, albeit a costly one, in the path that brought her to you. And it is YOU that has the girl now. Neither of you need to re-visit that old lesson, other than to respectfully tell one another your heartfelt feelings about it and move on. She does not need you to exact retribution, but she likely does need your understanding, support and affection. Jealousy is a negative emotion that can fester and build until it becomes something ugly that spoils something that might be pure and wonderful - like love. And trust me, my young friend, nothing in this world is so wonderful as love and falling in love. It is simply magical - something that makes it seem like you stepped out of a two dimensional black and white world into a new multi-colored and multi-dimensional one where anything is possible and the very air charged with those possibilities.

Should you find true love, there is nothing that will compare with being able to look into one another's eyes and just fall into each other while the rest of the world and time and space fade away until your whole universe becomes just the two of you caught up in that eternal moment. To kiss one another and have your knees suddenly become weak and your breath taken away. To wake up each day with a smile on your face because you have that special person in your life, and you just naturally think of something special you can do to brighten your lover's day, perhaps a poem or note of love left lying out or a bunch of handpicked flowers put in a vase, or some small something that says "I love you" and makes your heart soar as much as theirs. Quite simply, to live each day wanting nothing quite as much as making the one you love happy.

On the other hand, there is nothing sadder in this world, to me, to have a love like that, or one that even comes close, and then take that love for granted or let some petty negative emotions like jealousy or resentment cause it to slip away. Too many people let that happen and they gradually lose the magic until one day the magic is gone, and then they lose each other. Even many of the ones who do stay together lose so much of the love they once had that they become more roommates than true lovers. That is something that I would wish on no one and would personally never want to experience again. True love is the most precious thing we can ever have in this life and it is so rare.

Now, I am not saying that you may have found your true love, but you are so fortunate to be young and perhaps on the doorstep of finding your love. The older you get, the greater the odds are that you may never find it again if you let it slip away. I know of whence I speak and I would not wish you to be standing many years later in my shoes and looking back over your shoulder wondering "what if" and still somehow clinging to the hope that in spite of all odds the fairy tale you seek is still out there for you and someday you will fall in love again for the last and greatest time in your life.

To me, we should never give up on that fairy tale no matter how many may call us dreamers, because it is such a wonderful dream - to find someone special, fall in love and never fall out again, instead falling a little more in love every day for the rest of your life with someone who will be your best friend, passionate lover, partner in crime (smile) and fellow adventurer and who will walk hand in hand with you for the rest of this crazy and exciting journey we call life. A love where, many years later you will still have much of the same smoldering passion left over from the white hot heat of your initial lovemaking. And where, twenty, even thirty years from now, the two of you will still behave like a couple of young lovers, holding hands, kissing in public, not acting at all your age, and still having a special light in your eyes and a catch in your breath at the sight of one another much as you did the first time you met. . . . sigh.

Though you are at the very start of a journey that will likely contain many pitfalls, perhaps the words of one who has made a lot of that journey and pretty much stumbled on every rock and fallen in every hole along the way may help you avoid a few - no greater of which can be finding love and letting it slip away. And when you do fall, just pick yourself up and dust yourself off, hopefully a bit wiser for the lesson even if perhaps a bit nicked and dinged here and there, and just keep putting one foot in front of the other with a smile on your face, a song of hope in your heart, and, in my case anyway, more than a little merry mischief in your eyes.

One final thought, you never know when love is going to bite you squarely on the hind quarters and pierce that armor you think you are protecting yourself with - and the love you find may be nothing like the love you think you are seeking. If you do find true love, likely you will find that perfect love comes not from finding someone perfect to love, but rather from finding how to love someone imperfect perfectly.

If you see even the slightest possibility of some of these things I have written, then forget negative feelings such as anger, sadness. doubt or jealousy. Put a smile on your face and fill your heart with gladness. Take that gal and look her in the eyes and tell her how you may not like what has happened in the past, but it is in the past and that is where it belongs and where it will stay, and let her know you are there for her and then go have yourself some joy and fun. And perhaps think of all of the magical possibilities of love.

“When you love you should not say, God is in my heart, But rather, I am in the heart of God”
- The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

“Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great”
- Roger De Bussy-Rabutin

“Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt thy love.”
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare

“Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point.”
(The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing)
- Pascal

“Love is something eternal, the aspect may change, but not the essence”
- Van Gogh

"The sound of a kiss is not so loud as a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer! ”
- unknown

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am only like a clanging bell. And though I might have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I might have all faith so that I could remove mountains, if I have not love, then I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and sacrifice my body, if I have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind, love does not envy; love does not promote itself, is not puffed up. Love never fails.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

- 1st Cor. 13