I Don’t Know My Love Story, But I Know That I’ll Remember Those That Inspired My Love

Falling in love. We all know it happens. Many of us have had it happen, felt the overwhelming feelings. The other day, I was eating lunch and I noticed this couple. I knew they’d been together since the start of school. They are the type that you look at and say, “Those two are going to end up married.” I started thinking about how ten years from now, they’re probably going to have children.

Twenty years from now those children will be in college, maybe creating their own love stories. But we’re here, now, and I’m watching the beginning of what will be lifetime of love.

That’s the thing about love stories. Often times we forget about the people we encounter along the way. The grandioso story does not include the bystanders who watched as a couple held hands, or the people sitting at the table next to yours on your first date. But they were there. I think about the story of how my parents met. It was on a bus. My dad had left work early that day to go to the bank. He got on the bus and sat down next to my mom. As my dad told me once about him and my mom, “We’ve been together since the moment we met.” Did the other people on the bus that day know that they were witnessing the beginning of a love story? Were they aware that what appeared to be two strangers meeting for the first time, probably to never speak again, were actually soul mates starting their journey together? I think about these things because I think about what my own love story will be. I wonder if the people around me know.

On my wedding day, will it be to that guy I was best friends with all throughout college? Will my classmates hear about it through the grape vine and remark on how we were always together, laughing and sharing secrets. Maybe they’ll say they knew it was meant to be all along. Or maybe it will be to that guy I went out for coffee with once. It was essentially a blind date. It’s funny to think that the people around us could have witnessed the first moments, those beginning awkward exchanges of conversation that would bloom into days spent together, hearts joined, the words “I do.”

The fact is, I don’t know my love story. I don’t know who I will end up with, or what path we will take to get there. But I do know that on the way, I hope to remember some of the people who witnessed it. I hope I can inspire people with my love the way I have felt inspired by others love. I hope I can remind the heartbroken boy or the lonely girl that there is someone out there waiting for them, the way I was reminded a few days ago, watching that couple. I hope that someone can see the beginning of my love story, and wonder what their beginning will be. Maybe they won’t think twice when I exchange a few words with the guy sitting in front of me in the lecture hall. But maybe they’ll catch that moment, and years later can remark on how it was the start of what would become a lifetime of moments, me and that once stranger. Or maybe, like me with that couple, they’ll look at us and know that two soul mates have found each other.