On Falling In Love - My Wedding Toast

Well, Scruffy and I got married last Saturday. We decided to spend about 5 minutes during the toasts thanking our guests for coming, so we split the time evenly (as California Law dictactes) and each wrote about 2.5 minutes of material. Scruffy, being his kind and generous self, wrote a long list of thank yous and heartfelt thoughts, and I being myself, wrote a treatise on the nature of love.

I've been asked if I will publish this. I'm starting here, and we'll see if anything else comes of it.

"It’s a strange and dangerous business, falling in love. It’s one of the few adventures that happens both completely separate and yet totally entwined. There you are, in your life, with your family, your friends, your home, and your plans. Your heart, walled up in its own safe haven. Maybe you’re happy, maybe you’re not, but you’re you, and you’re there, contained within yourself.

Then, all of a sudden, because it’s always sudden, you meet someone. A smile. A conversation. A sweet gesture. And the walls around your heart begin to crack. And if you’re both very lucky, their walls are cracking too.

And so you go along with your daily life, seeing that someone more and more, watching your defenses crumble, wondering what’s on the other side. At some point you stop caring that your carefully built walls are falling to dust. Even later, you start helping, because you’re tired of being safe at the cost of not knowing what’s on the other side.

And then, if you’re both very lucky, the walls give way, and you see that someone, your someone, who quietly owns your heart, standing in the rubble of their own shattered castle. You realize that the thing on the other side was them all along. Your hearts have always shared a wall, because that’s how you two were designed.

Slowly, wonderfully, everything changes while kind of staying the same. Plans become Our Plans, home becomes Our Home. Your friends and my friends, Our Friends. And then, if you’re both very lucky, your family and my family, become Our Family.

It’s a strange and dangerous business, falling in love. There are fantastic failures and terrifying triumphs. And there are moments when it can’t possibly ever, ever work. But if you’re both very lucky, sometimes it does.

As I look around the room today, I think back on our own journey, the story that couldn’t have a happy ending but did. And I look at the people who love us, Our Friends, and Our Family, there is one thing I know without question: we have both been very lucky."