“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”

– George Carlin

Over the past 5 years, I became cynical. It didn’t happen overnight. I slowly morphed into one by watching other people’s actions or responses to relationship issues.

Social Media is a dangerous place to go if you have hope. It murders hope with negativity and taunts the heart for wanting anything deemed, “unrealistic“.

As I listened to people complain about every aspect of dating, loving and being responsible for the emotions and needs of another person, I pulled myself deeper and deeper into a shell of protection. I didn’t want reluctant love and resignation.

I wanted passion. But, the fire was slowly extinguished with the fearful speeches of others who possibly had suffered very real relationship trauma resulting in a less optimistic view of the potential in meeting new people.

I became influenced and adopted the fear. And, though I was meeting nice people, I experienced ambivalence or less than ideal offers and pulled back into my cocoon nursing the idea that maybe true love didn’t exist or wasn’t in the stars for someone like me.

And, then something happened…

I’m not endorsing an app, but I am sharing my experience.

This week, I was excited to purchase a subscription to Disney Plus. I heard about all the content that would be available and felt like someone had given me a passport to my childhood.

I watched several Disney Princess movies, which, yes, we have come to understand that they have some questionable elements. But, I wasn’t thinking about that as I watched it.

I watched it in awe and I slowly reconnected with the hopeful little girl who used to watch these movies and dream of love, romantic love. I fell right back in love with the magic and the idea that something seemingly impossible could happen.

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

― Oscar Wilde

And, kind of like the Grinch after little Cindy Who showed him kindness, my tiny heart grew and reopened.

I remembered how good it felt to believe in love and romance. I remembered how good it made me feel to think something great could happen at any moment. And, I remembered how thrilling it felt when I fell in love, was in love and daydreamed all day long about someone I loved.

I come alive in love. I thrive in caring for someone who cares for me. And, I light up in planning special moments and enjoying the world through the eyes of someone wildly different than me.

There is no way I can see or know everything there is to know. I have to rely on the experiences of others to show me things I may never otherwise see. And, I can get that through the love of someone else. The gift I give them in return for broadening my horizon and making me expand my knowledge and emotional capabilities is to create magic for them in a “realistic” world.

How do you create magic for someone in a 3D world? You get to know them through love and then you validate the things that are important to them by making them events.

I realized that I want to do that and it doesn’t benefit me to be closed off and not hopeful.

I fell back into love with the execution of love. And, I fell back into love with the version of myself that believes in love. The hopeless romantic.

I will never again let the “realists” steal my innocence.

“It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”

― E.M. Forster