Easy? Really?

Those of you who know me know how much I like my teen angst movies and TV dramas. I can't explain why I do - or wait, I could explain, but you know, I guess I'd just rather not. It's a guilty pleasure, and you know, we all have to have our guilty pleasures. Teen angst is mine.

There's a show I like to watch online called "The Secret Life of an American Teenager." The lyrics for the theme song are:

"Falling in love is such an easy thing to do.
Birds can do it, Bees can do it..
Let's do it - Let's fall in love!"

The first few times I heard this song, I thought "How lame! Falling in love is not easy." But you know what? The song is right. Falling is love is easy. Almost too easy. The difficult part is staying in love.

I do think it's easier for a young person to fall in love than an older person. See, the more hits in the heart, the thicker the barrier is, making it a little harder for Cupid's arrow to penetrate easily. Still...once someone makes up their mind they are ready to fall in love, they will.

Oh, I'm not saying they'll fall in love wisely - I'm just saying, if one really wants to fall in love, they can because it's freakin' easy to fall in love.

But is it, as the fairy tales say, true love? Eh...probably not. It's a romanticized version of love, and a lot of time it doesn't have staying power. Sometimes, though, it does.

The staying power of love isn't readily apparent in the beginning, during the honeymoon stage. Nope, it comes later - sometimes much later. Do you still love the person after they enclose you in a Dutch oven (see? I do watch too many teen movies). Or after you see them pick their nose for the first time? Or after you find out their dirty little secret? How about after they are diagnosed with an awful disease?

Yeah, it's only when love is tested that it is revealed to be lasting or not. Until love is tested, we can only hope we chose wisely in the first place.