Many the Miles

The great thing about romance is that there is always more to come. Just when you think it can’t get any better, you find that one quirk about the person that you never want to lose. You know you’ve really caught the love bug when your heart aches so bad no amount of Tylenol will ease your symptoms. The shakes. Increased heart beat. Uncontrollable palm sweating. You’ve lost your voice. It’s really a horrible affair. They make it look glamorous in the movies because they secretly want us all to feel their pain.

Look at Gatsby for instance. This guy seems to have it all. His name is Jay Gatsby and he has magnificent house and a great fortune. He throws wonderful parties with a plethora of guests to mingle with until dawn. Yet, Gatsby is an empty man, longing for someone across the lake. I like to call him the Loneliest Party Host. He throws these frivolous parties filled with people he doesn’t like, hoping that one day Daisy will show up at one his parties. She lives across the lake with the green light at the end of the dock. It has been over five years since they were together but Gatsby never got over Daisy. She moved on with Tom Buchanan and even has a small daughter. But Gatsby loves Daisy all the same. Gatsby would no doubt live by the statement “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” In his case, it is true. As the story unfolds, the reader begins to realize that Gatsby has fallen more in love with the idea of Daisy as the years go on. He is foolish until the day that he is killed and believes that he is in love with Daisy even after all of these years. Distance and time away only magnified his love for Daisy.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder” doesn’t necessarily mean distance makes you love someone more. In fact, the only thing distance does is help you realize how much you really care about someone. If you are a plane ride away from someone and you figure out that you would be devastated if you never saw their face again, you know how much you care about that person. But if you can’t realize that when they are standing right in front of you, then you aren’t as fond of them as you thought. The distance shouldn’t strengthen the fondness, it should merely uncover it. It should be like it was playing hide-and-seek. Gatsby wasn’t searching for his love for Daisy, because the longer he was without her, the more he created his own version of her. Maybe he grew fonder of her as the years went on, but at some point he stopped loving Daisy and fell for the girl he created in his dreams.

This phrase should be used cautiously. Absence makes the heart grow fonder because we tend to start missing people we care about when they aren’t near us. The person can be half a world away or in another part of the city, but if they aren’t with us, we begin to miss their company. It makes us appreciate them more. When you really care about someone, you want to spend all the time in the world with them. You start thinking of ways to be near them. It’s a natural reaction, and no matter how hard you try it won’t go away. It’s the little bugger that won’t let you think. It’s the way your heart won’t slow down—no matter how still you sit. It’s the feeling you can’t let go of no matter how many miles are in between you.

Now go find your love. 1 Mississippi…2 Mississippi…3 Mississippi…..