There's a Fine, Fine Line

I spent most of the week listening to the soundtrack of Avenue Q . Ok, not exactly Holy Week material but my Jesus Christ Superstar OCS was on the blink. Anyway, the lines of one particular song in Avenue Q caught my attention.

"There's a fine, fine line between together and not
And there's a fine, fine line between what you wanted and what you got.
You gotta go after the things you want while you're still in your prime...

There's a fine, fine line between love
And a waste of time."

In recent weeks, you could say that I've been obsessed about love. I've devoured Alain de Botton's Essays in Love from cover to cover, nodding my head in agreement so many times that I started to resemble one of those darn cats and dogs attached to the rear window of so many taxi cabs. How can you bypass a book whose opening lines read "The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe [contrary to all the rules of our enlightened age] that we are fated one day to meet the man or woman of our dreams? Can we not be excused a certain superstitious faith in a creature who will prove the solution to our relentless yearning?"

It's a topic that we all talk about. In slumber parties, we talk about finding Prince Charming. In bridal showers, we gush about The One. In sorrow-drowning wine sessions, we talk about the heartbreak caused by the One who Got Away or the One Who's Just Not Into Me. Valentine's Day wouldn't be one of the most commercially successful days of the year if we didn't feel the need to celebrate L-O-V-E.

For many, the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of love. Some people are willing to take the risk of rejection because the rewards are so great. Conversely, others are scared to commit BECAUSE the risks are so great. There are people who are love addicts who go into therapy to seek help for their addiction. There are couples who will go to all sorts of counselling to help rekindle the flame.

I've always thought of myself as a pessimist. I persisted in seeing the glass as half-empty. I only realized that golly gee, there IS hope after all when I fell in love. Not madly or wildy, but steadily and unconsciously. It was a quiet process whose progression was anything but planned.

"There's a fine, fine line between a lover and a friend;
There's a fine, fine line between reality and pretend;
And you never know 'til you reach the top if it was worth the uphill climb."

I'm standing at the top of the mountain and looking at what I have. It is worth the steep, at times dangerous, climb. The risks were well worth the happiness I am experiencing now. To the joy of my masochistic soul, there is other peaks in the horizon to explore. And this time, there is someone who will be there to belay me.