Here it Comes

Allright, look out motherfuckers. I'm abouts to bust out a confession.

I totally adore the movie Love Actually. The end never fails to give me a rush of joy--all those people, declaring love, taking risks, tying up loose ends, and getting what's best for them. The movie ends with thousands of people just hugging, for Chrissake.

The part that really gets me is the kid and Liam Neeson at the airport. The kid is in love with a super talented classmate of his, and she is getting on an airplane and heading off to America. He only has one last chance to make the magic happen and change his life. At the airport, he blasts through security sans ticket and catches up to his true love (who has the same name as his dead mother, of course. Fate, anyone?). Security hauls him away before anything can happen.

He shakes the guards off, smoothes his coat, and looks at Liam Neeson with the eyes of a champion. The eyes of a man who sacrificed his freedom to tell a girl he liked her. Satisfaction. Triumph. Joy. Pride. And the girl comes up behind him and rewards him with a pure, beautiful kiss on the cheek.

I lose my fucking mind when I see this scene. Can you remember a time when things were simple? When we understood what it meant to love someone no matter what? Or do we even fuck things up as children and learn that the only love worth having is the kind that is reciprocated?

In rare and brief moments like those, you didn't feel embarassed because you confessed you liked him and then he didn't call you. When you had a pure, unadulterated flash of joy as a result of the love in your heart, you could have cared less that you weren't on his kickball team. These moments are so rare, we forget that they ever existed. They get buried underneath the pain that we inflict on ourselves as adults struggling to Not Be Alone.

Love Actually taps into those memories for me. Like when I adored Jolon Clark so much that it made me sing Mariah Carey songs in my room. I didn't really mind that he liked Karey Deines instead. I knew it all along, even when we actually dated. But those were a great couple of weeks, I'll tell you. I put myself on the line, went for what I wanted, and had a blast. We held hands at the roller rink, and shared popcorn on movie night. It ended, of course, and we were never really friends again. But I hold a very fond place for him in my heart.

Shelby in Steel Magnolias said it best:

I would rather have five minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothin' special.

That is true. The romances in my life have all been wonderful at points. They would have made me charge into my beloved's home in Portgual and ask for her hand in Portuguese, or find my assistant in her home on the way to a Christmas concert when I was the Prime Minister of Britain, or fly to another part of the world to camp out with four hotties in their shared room (I guess you should watch the movie).

This life can be wonderful, my darlings. Fuck the lack of phone calls or the obstacles in your path. Go for what you want, and rejoice in the fact that you did it. LeezyB had a great point recently: What would you do if you couldn't fail?

Now get out there and make some love happen.

All I want for XMas is you. g