Love Story! That took me back forty years! Everyone in our school was reading it. So beautiful. So passionate. So sad. In fact so beautiful was it, that it caused me to suppress out of sight the puzzled misgiving I felt – but… but surely… but surely love doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry…
Of course it doesn’t.
Quite the reverse.
Love means having to say you’re sorry more than you ever imagined possible. Love means learning to see things from the other person’s point of view and letting your pride tumble into the dust and not bothering to waste your time going to get it back.
Love means letting go of things that really did matter to you quite a lot because the other person matters to you more.
Love means getting over yourself and settling for reality. Love means accepting that if the other person still drinks their tea like Darth Veda (slurrrp… Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!) until they drop dead at 94, well that probably doesn’t matter so very much in the grand scheme of things.
But whatever else it means, love means being willing to say you’re sorry over and over and over again.
In Buzzfloyd’s house, she says, they have been working on ‘unqualified apology’; dispensing with ‘I’m sorry, but…’ and just stopping without going further than ‘I’m sorry.’ She says it is transformative.
The Plain way is not Plain, without humility. Humility is not humble, without being willing to say ‘I’m sorry’
Love Story. ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’ However did it manage to run and run and run, turning on a one-liner that is so patently obviously untrue?