Hopeless romantic tips hand to possibilities of creativity in love
by Dedrick Minor

I have concluded that my life's goal is to live a romantic life. It would definitely be a stretch for me to label myself as "a hopeless romantic," but I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the fact that I am someone who has literally fallen deeply in love with everything that constitutes romance. My justification for being the way that I am is that I believe the crux of Christianity is the world's greatest romance story.

Webster's dictionary defines "romance" as "to court or to woo." Admittedly, this rather short definition does not do justice to the idea of romance, but it does provide interesting discussion. The question was asked, "When does the courting stage stop?"

Allow me to illustrate the answer. When a young man meets a young lady, he commences to woo her so that he may possibly obtain her heart exclusively for himself. Let's say for analogy's sake that he obtains her heart and they start a dating relationship. At this point, many would say that the wooing or courting period has ceased. On the contrary, the truth is that the wooing never stops. The wooing that initiated the relationship must be the same wooing that must sustain the relationship. If the wooing stops, then the romance inevitably stops. And if the romance stops, then all the feelings of "being in love" stop too.

Furthermore, I am convinced one cannot endeavor to become skilled at being a romantic person. This, I believe, is so because romance is not learned; it is cultivated. The truth is that we all have a seed of romance in us. The problem is that many of us never allow that seed to germinate because we are too lazy to resist the "ordinariness" of love because we have become so accustomed to it.

When we allow romance to depart, what could have been true love turns into nothing more than platonic expressions of care. Romance invites desirability; in other words, it invites a certain longing that can render both parties defenseless.

An actor once said, "Romance is the possibility of a thing." It is all the romantic expressions that occur between the time when one first meets a beautiful young lady and the time when one asks her to marry him. Many older couples make comments like "the romance is gone" because they have given up on romance. However, what they are really saying is that they have exhausted the possibility of romance.

Therefore, in order to maintain romance one must maintain a certain amount of creativity. True love fueled by the fires of romance must always fight to maintain its uniqueness. It must continue to evolve in order that it might stay alive.

For instance, I have a "thing" I do whenever I am taking the gruesome trek back home to Baton Rouge from Tulsa. I intentionally move my body in different positions in the car seat for the express purpose of staying awake. Likewise, romance ceases to be "awake" when it neglects to remain creative and changing.

Romance is as crucial to love as air is to the existence of life. Jesus, the Bridegroom, "romanced" the world by offering himself in the greatest creative acts of all time - his death on the cross. By avoiding the ordinary, he romantically created an atmosphere by which the world might love him. We, too, in order to effectively love, must search within our own selves to find that fire of romance deeply embedded in each of our hearts.

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