“…two lovely bats crashed in the night. They felt a zing love at first sight. They knew right then they would be husband and wife. For a zing only happens once in your life. Your zing will come, my love. Cherish it”
(From the animated movie Hotel Transylvania)
Zing in the above quote means connection, love (which I'm beginning to love using by the way). Reading fairy tales such as The Princess and The Pea, Cinderella, Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty and others as a little girl gave me the innocent idea of growing up to meet that perfect gentleman—the knight in shining armour—fall in love with him at first sight, get married to him and live happily ever after. I even pictured what our wedding day would look like: an all-white reception which is angelic and dreamy, a memory to relish for a lifetime. Well, who says one can’t have that beautiful wedding day, as dreamy and lofty as it may seem.
But then I would say as a little girl—and I speak for other girls who had my kind of childhood— I didn’t get the real representation of life, love and other challenges of growing up in those books. In fact, the books never intended to tell us the truth. Maybe they didn’t want to bother our pretty little heads about what life is really all about. Maybe they did not want to scare us. Maybe they just wanted us to enjoy our childhood and ingrain optimism in us.
Now as an adult, I feel they should have prepared us to not always expect life to be smooth a little. Perhaps using subtle measures in those stories to pass the message across would have done the trick. The possibility that the writers actually did that cannot be ignored but, my good Lord! Easter eggs are cooked for adults, discerning ones that is, and not little girls.
Now as an adult, I feel they should have prepared us to not always expect life to be smooth a little. Perhaps using subtle measures in those stories to pass the message across would have done the trick. The possibility that the writers actually did that cannot be ignored but, my good Lord! Easter eggs are cooked for adults, discerning ones that is, and not little girls.
As little girls, we were not told that most times you don’t fall in love at first sight. Though I’ve heard one or two stories about people who did, I’m yet to meet someone who actually did. You get to be friends first, fall in love, and then other things follow. And it either ends as marriage or a break up. On the contrary, we grew up expecting the zing.
We weren’t told that our precious little hearts can be broken into several tiny pieces and we are left to cry our eyes out and ask ourselves “why?”, “what did I do wrong?”, “what happened?”. Sooner or later, it becomes hard giving that heart out again. The optimism we grew up having about life and love sheds its skin and takes up another costume: pessimism. Sooner or later, we become very protective of our hearts.
Some way, somehow some of us learn that we just have to keep trying. There’s no telling that the zing will never happen, however idealistic it seems. You have to risk looking like a fool for romance. You are not always going to get it right. People may stare or talk. But at least you made it worth their while and you gave it a shot and every single shot you give is worth it. And who knows, one of the shots might actually be your last bus stop. These things never run on schedule. That’s the reality we eventually come to terms with.
Nevertheless, don’t get it twisted: love is a beautiful thing like D’banj once said. God created us to love and not to be alone. The scripture is crystal clear about this in Genesis 2:18: “Now the Lord God said, it is not good (sufficient, satisfactory) that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper meet (suitable, adapted, complementary) for him.”
The bible also tells us about love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends”.
I remember Owen Wilson saying in the movie ‘How Do You Know’: “We all are on some kind of assembly line. You know, just going through each other’s lives. Until one day you close the factory down and you take one product home and you use it monogamously, for the rest of your life...”
This kind of describes how we, now grown up girls, should see life in face of any emotional disappointment. We just keep trying till we finally meet THE ONE we want to spend the rest of our lives with.
Love makes the journey through life worthwhile. Take a chance. You never know how it will end up but take it anyway.
