Life is mostly a series of mundane experiences. If you were to chart out every minute of every day that you have lived and assign each minute a relative value of importance most of the minutes would be inconsequential. Sleeping, working, eating, exercising, and most every moment we live ultimately only plays a small role in changing the course of our lives. Breaking out the few moments that truly changed the path of your life is difficult. Often those things that seemed very important at the time turn out to be small bumps in our path. Other times, something that we take for granted as a matter of course turns out to be something that alters our final destination in ways that we did not expect.
Examples from my own life that I consider to be 'life changing' moments are:
- My first real understanding of what the moon and stars are.
- My first philosophical moment, in which I had a conversation with my Father at the age of six that human kind should be focused on something other than materialism.
- My first day at college, when I realized that I was on my own for the first time.
- The birth of each of our children, when something new came into the world.
- My first paycheck after a significant promotion, when I learned that hard work has value beyond self satisfaction but still leaves you a slave to the system.
- My first car accident, which introduced me to the idea of mortality for the first time.
I could go on with that list, but that's not what I set out to write about. Standing head and shoulders above every other single life changing event in my current existence is a single, defining moment that changed everything... forever. I want to share that with you today.
I WON! I WON!
I often feel like I won the lottery when it comes to the Love department. It isn't everyone that gets to experience having their other half complete them in the way that I have with my wife. Cliche' though it may be, the first meeting between my wife and I was when I finally understood the meaning behind the phrase, 'Love at First Sight.'
Over the centuries 'Love at First Sight' has been the topic of choice for countless authors, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, and hopeless romantics everywhere. It seems a topic that most of us have forgotten about in this age of instant gratification, moral corruption, and impatience. My hope is that by writing this I might reach just one person out there who is looking for True Love and is about to settle for Truly Convenient.
Let me begin by explaining just exactly what I mean when I say 'Love at First Sight.' The meeting between @byn and I was completely unexpected. I was looking for one thing (lust) and found something else entirely.
When I first met Byn it was a shock to my system, and I mean that in the most literal of ways. To this day I can recall the sensation with utmost clarity. It started with what I would call a 'buzzing' sound, though it wasn't specifically a sound. It was more of a... resonance. I could tell even before seeing her that something life changing was about to happen. The best way that I can describe it is by likening it to a tuning fork. Bear with me.
I remember in 8th grade music class our instructor brought out several tuning forks of various frequencies. He struck one and it emitted a constant, steady tone at 261.6Hz, or middle C for those of you who know music. Mr. Conlee then held another tuning fork of a different frequency up to the Middle C tuning fork. Nothing happened. It didn't react at all. He repeated this for several other tuning forks of varying size, and none of them responded to the ringing tone still coming from the middle C fork.
After baiting us for a while he struck the middle C tuning fork again, and held ANOTHER middle C fork up to it, about 6 inches apart. Mr Conlee separated them after about five seconds, and then muted the original tuning fork with his hand. To our surprise the second middle C tuning fork continued to emit a strong, clear sound at middle C: 261.6Hz.
In other words, things that vibrate at a certain rate can excite other things that vibrate at the same rate if they are in close proximity.
That's important, and I'll come back to it later.
It was late at night, or rather... it was very early morning. I was headed towards a rendezvous with someone who I had met only hours prior in a bar, but I couldn't find her. The motel room that she had told me to come to was vacant. Nobody answered the door.
Elsewhere in the motel complex I could hear music and laughter. There was apparently a party in progress, so I assumed that my potential companion for the evening had migrated to the party because I was late. So... to the party I went.
I hopped back on my motorcycle and made my way through the parking lot towards the sound of music. When I first pulled up, a gaggle of crunchy-poofy valley-girl types clustered around my bike. If you don't know the reference, look it up. They wanted to know why I was there, my name, etc. 'Hey,' thought I, 'maybe I'll get lucky tonight even if my planned excursion doesn't pan out.' I had absolutely zero idea that my life was about to change in ways I was completely unprepared for.
First, one of the crunchy-poofy types wanted a ride on my bike. Sure, said I. She was reasonably hot. I was reasonably horny. She got on, we drove around town for a while, and after about 20 minutes she indicated that it was about time to head back the motel... where she had a room. SCORE! Off we went, back toward the motel.
This is the point in the story where things get remarkably clear for me. You know how there are memories in your head that are just vague 'this happened, then this happened, then this happened...?'
This isn't one of those. I mean, do you remember the texture of the fabric of the shirt you were wearing on July 28th, 1990?
I do. It was soft cotton. I distinctly remember the weight of my leather jacket on my shoulders, the heat of my motorcycle's engine, the suede interior of my gloves on my hands, and the smell of musk perfume coming off the crunchy-poofies. I remember these things not because of what they were, but because of what came next. They provided context. It was out of this miasma of sensations that wonder was built.
As we were about to get off my bike and enter the crunchy-poofy's hotel room, something odd came over me. You know what deja vu feels like? It's weird. A glimpse into the future, when you suddenly know that you've experienced something before? This was something like that, but not quite the same.
Let's return to my tuning fork story from before. When two things of equal resonance come close to one another, and one is in a state of vibration, the other matching element will begin to vibrate in harmony. That's the best I can come to an explanation for what happened next.
I remember getting off my bike and being stopped in my tracks. The stopping element wasn't a physical obstruction, hesitation from the crunchy-poofy, or even self doubt. It was something I'd never experienced before. The very air around me seemed to solidify and gather into stripes. Like, literal stripes drawn in the air in font of my vision. I shit you not. I saw literal striations in the air, in the same way that you can see heat waves, as it were.
Then there was the physical sensation. It went beyond our material existence. It first manifested as a slight 'tugging' sensation in my stomach area. It literally turned me in a 180 degree spin. My tuning fork was resonating with something I'd not encountered before. Something outside of my experience.
Out of the motel room that my body pointed me at emerged a true enigma. Something that was simultaneously a brand new experience and the completion of something begun long ago. In that moment I forgot everything. Even my name, it seemed, because when she asked me what it was I couldn't remember. She was, has been, and continues to be the most beautiful thing that I've ever seen. The following ten seconds stretched out for an eternity as I struggled to understand what was happening to me. It finally got through to me that she was talking. To me.
“Hello? You there?” I honestly can't tell you what she had said before that.
From that moment on, my life has never been the same. I had loved before. In fact, up until that very moment I thought I was in love with someone else. The universe promptly showed me how wrong I was about that.
In the intervening 28 years I have tried a number of times to explain with words what happened that day. I've never quite gotten it right. I've used metaphors about magnets, analogies about puzzle pieces, words describing the physical sensations, and even postulated about our eternal existence outside of this physical simulation we call life.
Each of them has been true and yet not enough. I've come to the realization that there just aren't sufficient words to describe it. Perhaps the most compelling evidence I can give is that even now, 28 years later, I am still head over heels in love with my wife. Together we have raised five incredible humans (I give most of the credit for our success there to Byn). We've traveled the world, failed and succeeded at our goals, endured sickness, fought, made up, joined forces, and at times gone our separate way for a short while. Each of us has at one time or another done something truly hurtful to our partner. We've also helped each other to become more than we would have been on our own.
Through all of that, regardless of how great or how shitty life was at any given moment, I would have told you that I really only believe in one thing in this world. I believe in the love I have for Byn. She is my other half, and without her I am incomplete. Our love is the single most tangible fact in my reality. It just is. It has always been, and will always be.
You now what else? Even without that physical/spiritual/emotional confirmation that she is my perfect match I would still love my wife. She is an amazing person who constantly inspires me to be better than I am. Through her eyes I see joy, life, color, and light that would otherwise be obscured. She helps me to understand who I am and what I can be. It is through her that I understand my place in this world and find meaning.
It's worth noting if you're reading this and you feel that you're in love with someone but never experienced what I did... that doesn't mean that you're not with your perfect match. My skull is particularly dense and I'm fairly slow on the uptake most of the time. It's quite possible that the Universe just realized that I needed to be slapped around a bit to get my attention. Indeed, Byn claims to not have felt anything remotely similar to my experience, yet I have no doubt of her love for me or that we complete each other.
Thank you, Byn Always, for consenting to be my bride. I love you.
If you're interested in hearing her version of this series of events, check out my wife @byn's post here:
@byn/an-unexpected-love-story-really-unexpected-my-perspective-of-our-how-we-met
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