... I learned from The Sound of Music.
Hear me out. I'm serious. This movie contains many of the combinations and possibilities for love and relationships (and contains some surprisingly good advice if you pay attention). Although the movie was made in 1965 the situations are still applicable today. This must mean that, for all our discoveries, the greatest mystery remains the opposite sex. There are three main situations in which we find ourselves when it comes to love. These situations change as we get older, but elements of them all can be found in every relationship. They are universal. This is the first.
For most Mormons, like Liesl, our first experience with love happens when we are about 'sixteen going on seventeen.' Things are complicated. We still live at home. Our parents (rightly) see our naivety and warn us of the dangers of dating too soon. Thus we are forced to keep our love secret. Hidden away. We have reached the golden age of invincibility. Our hearts haven't yet felt the stinging rebuke of rejection or unrequited infatuation. We charge blindly and love fiercely. We leave reason and reservations standing in the rain like unwanted party guests. Our lives revolve around this new high, and we give all we have for this new feeling; exhilarating and terrifying, like being in heaven and having the flu at the same time. Pulses race around twisting stomachs every time we read (or misread) a signal. We look for any support for our vain hope and we are rewarded.
That is, up until we find out that Rolf is actually a Nazi. Then the latent growing pains that were nothing but dull aches before turn into crashing waves that hit like blunt force trauma. We are suddenly no longer invincible. We all know what it was like back then. Everything was so grandiose. Our worlds began and ended with current circumstances. Any negative major event brought with it looming feelings of Armageddon, as if the world's very foundations would crack any minute. We live or die with our successes and failure. Girls would cry and boys sulk, too proud to let gathering drops fall.
But we recover. We find that we are more resilient than we thought. We learn that time is God's Band-Aid for emotional hurt. And we grow. We emerge a little more sure that next time we won't act the same way. Or, at the very least, we will be wary of the next set of charming blue eyes and blond hair that marches into our life.
To be continued...
[Keep following. Next time I will relate the story of how Hitler lost his bet with a midget. I mean little person.]
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