From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
16 June
The first hint that this may be love is manners. It’s
invariably innocent bean-counting, and runs something like this: “I’ll be happy
to scratch your back if you’ll be good enough to scratch mine.” Hard on the
heels of this phase is the Look-Good-Always phase [I’ll never see her without
her face on; she’ll never see me without my stomach tucked in]. Hopefully, with
time, the real thing reveals itself because willy-nilly my love and I are bound
to step out into the abyss and the one asks for, and the other confers,
forgiveness because sooner rather than later the need for forgiveness will
arise since each of us is going to screw up.
How real the real thing is depends on the extent to which
forgiveness - defanging the screw-ups - becomes habitual. That’s a hard
standard; many settle for some optical illusion that, in the small print, allows
for the opposite: holding grudges.
But be warned: holding grudges is sugar in the gas tank.
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