Forgive my absence yesterday. It's been a very busy but fun weekend, and I did not have access to my computer yesterday! So here we go!
I've been thinking quite a bit about simplicity. There is a part of me that longs for a time when the simple act of sipping tea, or gathering around to listen to someone read from Shakespeare's sonnets was the stuff that life was made of. It also seems that, at least what I've read, that the act of courtship and falling in love were also so much simpler.
Forgive me, I am a Jane Austen groupie, and perhaps she has skewed my sense of what romance is and should be. I was watching one of my favorite films this evening, Sense and Sensibility, also one of my favorite books by the way, and I always watch in awe of how the courtship of Edward and Elinor unfolds. There is such an innocence and a simplicity to the love that develops between them. There is no passionate love scene; it's all about communication and understanding. My goodness, they hardly even touch each other through the story, yet the develop this deep and ever-lasting love.
We are really missing so much of this in today's world. It's all about how quickly can things progress, how many dates I can go on in a 7 day period, updating my dating profile on a daily basis, instead of the beauty of allowing things to unravel organically. There is something to be said for developing a friendship with someone first. I truly believe that the best relationships are built on friendship and communication. If you can't enjoy talking to the person you have chosen to spend the rest of your life with, then, by God, who can you talk to.
So maybe there is something to the late-Georgian era. Maybe we shouldn't allow romance to die, and perhaps we need redefine what romance is, and how it should be conducted. I don't think Austen was off mark when she described the process of falling in love as of one of gentility and innocence. Why not say, as Elinor said so dearly, "I think very highly of him--that I greatly esteem him." So, maybe we all need to turn the blackberries off, unplug the laptop, and allow the universe to find us and bring us the love we deserve. And then when we have it, slow down, talk to each other, light some candles, sip tea, and read to each other a little Jane Austen while you're at it.
“Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations.” -Jane Austen
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