Again, I must preface this blog with a little disclaimer… The following is technically just “rambling” thoughts and ideas about a topic I feel I know little about and understand even less about. If you’d just like to watch the 4 minute video and skip the words, it’s fine by me! I’d love to hear your comments about the video, though, so please let me know what you thought of it! I’m more scared to hear what you may think about my thoughts and ideas. Again, I feel as though my limited vocabulary and general inability to express my thoughts has somehow crippled me from really communicating my entire perspective, and instead only permitted me to give you a small slice of my mind and heart. Nonetheless, I’m exhaling my breath, uncrossing my fingers, and posting yet another vulnerable blog entry. Enjoy~

I stumbled upon this video today. I watched it three times. It evoked in me an emotion that I have not yet experienced or identified. It brings out an emotion that is neither sad nor joyful. If I were to spew out a few words that might briefly suffice, perhaps “skeptical” would be among them… Also “romantic”, “jaded”, “yearning”, “revelation”…

I noticed among the comments on the YouTube site someone asking, “is there a sequel?”. It’s a natural curiosity, is it not? Indeed, we wonder if she ever received her camera… if she called him… if they had a relationship…

I immediately realized something I have never really come to realize before. We don’t want a sequel. I don’t, anyway. I always thought I did. But now, it seems to me that a sequel would be “boring”. The answers to my most nagging questions would simply take away from the deep feelings and emotions that the mysteries of this video brought out. Knowing the entire story would somehow smother and dilute the purity of the 267 second clip.

It leaves me to ponder my own view of romance. My perspective has changed over the course of the last year, and even years prior. Is romance an isolated event? Does it have a beginning and an end? I notice we call entire books “romance novels” and certain movies “romantic movies”… And yet, I wonder, how much actual time within a 2 hour movie or a 500 page book is actually “romance”?

Let’s not play with words here. I don’t need anyone to read me the definition of romance. You know what I’m talking about… I’m talking, of course, about that thing we desire when we do read the romance novel or watch the romantic movie. I’m talking about the thing that little girls desire when they’re little children pretending to walk the aisle. I’m talking about the thing you see everyone else experiencing, while never really feeling like you’ve experienced it yourself. I’m talking about the fog of romance.

I don’t know if you’ve ever looked up at the clouds and thought about what it would be like to bounce upon the tops of them, like jumping on a comfortable bed with down blankets and soft pillows. Perhaps you’ve had a window seat on an airplane, and couldn’t help but imagine jumping out of the plane to be caught gently in the white blanket of clouds beneath you. Of course, in reality, you would fall straight through them to your grisly, pathetic death… and I think many people often do, when they put faith in the idea that romance can satisfy you (or even, that you’ll somehow be as satisfied with the amount of romance you are given as you are when you leave the theater after a good chick flick).

I wonder about the design of romance itself. Was it really intended to exist, or did it just happen? Was there a design? IS there a design? Can romance really be planned, at all? Doesn’t the very nature of romance demand some sort of “magic” or chemistry that is born outside of and exists outside of the norm?

I can’t help but feel like some sort of knock-off of the original human being. I’m just a replica of a replica of a replica. I’m the cheap, made-in-China, plastic, easily-breakable, lead painted version of man, and my ideas of “romance” follow suit. Adam didn’t have to deal with the Hollywood expectations of romance. It just happened. Pure sparks and steady flame. Everything since the fall of man now seems corrupted, obscure, deficient… weak… like a paper that’s been copied in an industrial copier so many times that the writing is barely legible anymore.

Perhaps true romance exists out there. If it does, I don’t want to know about it. Not yet, anyway. I simply don’t. Let me find it on my own. In the meantime, I’m perfectly content and appeased by assuming that my lack of experiences (in encountering “enduring” romance, anyway) permit the belief that romance is as solid a hope as the pillowy, weight-supporting cushion of a cumulus cloud.

It seems that the only way to really ever be content in romance is to enjoy the snippets that do occur, as they occur. Every 4 minute clip of your life that passes you by must somehow hold enough value to you that the other 10,076 minutes of the week don’t really matter, or at least don’t have to hold such a remarkable value (strictly in the area of “romance”, that is). Romance, if you have any desire for it, must be intentionally accepted and appreciated, because it will be brief.

If clouds be before me or below me, wonderful. If not, that is ok. Perhaps one will surprisingly hold my weight for some lengthy amount of time. In the meantime, it sure is nice to have finally come to a point in my life where my hope is invested in something other than the lofty dreams of a 6 year old (or some idealistic Hollywood writer), and in something firm, valuable, and satisfying. Let’s hope this is just the beginning… just the blurry opening of my infant eyes to the world of God’s design for romance.