I received fabulous news yesterday…actually, I did not provide enough emphasis there…I received FABULOUS news yesterday.  The big news: Val and Jim are getting married after six years of dating. 

Now, you may be thinking that people get married every day and wondering why I categorize this news as not merely fabulous, but FABULOUS.  Well, it has something to do first with the people specifically – Val and Jim, and it also has to do with this notion that love is not merely a option for the young…it remains a true blessing for the young at heart.

Val & Jim

First, Val and Jim – two more lovely and charismatic folks you would be hard-pressed to find.  They fit together perfectly and have a smooth and authentic California-esque laid back quality that draws others around them in.  They are genuine people who genuinely love each other and to be around them is to understand the potential of what love can be when done well.

It is true that neither Val, nor Jim are in their twenties or in their thirties even.  This is not their first rodeo.  This is best stated as a later in life type of love affair, but amazingly, in their presence, one can’t help but feel a youthful energy and a deep confirmation of how fresh and exciting each day can be.  There is nothing "older" about their love and relationship even if they are chronologically "older".  And lest you think that this is based on the new love phenomenon so often seen early on in relationships, let me make it very clear that Val and Jim have already been together for six years – the requisite dating time is in.

I think there is something so intrinsically beautiful and honest in the message of love that Val and Jim bring to us.  It is a message that goes beyond basic attractions and romantic gestures.  It is a love seated in knowing and loving oneself first…a love seated in an understanding of what matters most and what doesn’t matter at all…a love seated in the potentiality of genuine commitment based on the whole of a person in the now as opposed to the love that is so typically based in the promise of something in the future.  They came into their relationship as two complete people and yet together they seem to magnify the completeness of the other – it is beautiful to see and hard to imagine how one could be extricated from the other. 

I am a fan of Val and Jim.  I am always happy to be in their presence as when I am with them I know, to a moral certainty, that love is not merely a folly of youth…no, love is a gift that we always have to give and when given to the right person at the right time it can create something larger than the sum of its parts. 

I want to be like Val and Jim when I grow up.  I want to look at someone the way Val and Jim look at each other.  I want to believe that deep and abiding love is an option that is never off the table.  I want to know that love is better, richer and more deeply appreciated when you come to it fully-blossomed as an individual.  Yes…I want to be like Val and Jim when I grow up and their love stands as evidence of the possibilities that life continues to hold.

Congratulations Val and Jim on your upcoming marriage and thank you for the joy and light your love brings into the lives of others.

Day two hundred and ninety-one of the new forty – obla di obla da

CC