(or what happens when you fall down that long well of passion over a person, a place, a sport, a game, a belief, and your heart goes boom and your mind leaves town)

1. FALLING IN LOVE IN SIX ACTS: A PASSION PLAY - (or what happens when you fall down that long
well of passion over a person, a place, a sport, a game, a belief, and your heart goes boom and your
mind leaves town)

2. ACT 1: LUST - (I think I love you, who are you anyway?) - Here it is, the big “WOW!” the big “GEE!”
the big “YESYESYES!” youʼve been waiting for. This is where you find something or someone and
believe they are better, greater, cuter, wiser, more wonderful than anything you have ever known.
Lust isnʼt a sin, itʼs a necessity, for with lust as our guide we imagine our bodies moving the way
that our bodies were meant to move: We can do marathons with our feet, lift weights with our arms,
have stars in our eves and do a nifty tango. And you think: I have no need of food. I have no need
of sleep. I have no needs other than chewing the occasional breath mint. You are the best thing
thatʼs ever happened to me. Probably because you havenʼt happened to me yet. Now I can pass
into the next act, so poetically called:

3. ACT 2: EUPHORIA - (or: oh, yippee, youʼre mine) - You feel funny inside. You feel funny
outside. You feel you could do anything and no one would dare laugh at you. This love, you
will treasure. You will not put it in the basement next to your rowing machine, treadmill and
thermal body sweat wrap. And you will not take this love for granted, because that is the
biggest sin of all. And you say: I feel so good, I feel so strong. I feel actually attractive and I
could learn to live with that feeling. Oh, let us sing and dance and eat brown mushy foods low
in fat. Oh, joy! Oh, rapture! Oh, but what if Iʼm no good at this? Oh, I am no good at this. I am a
dingy speck on the wall of humanity and look how badly painted that wall is! I am becoming
very, very afraid. That must be because Iʼm passing into the third act, called:

4. ACT 3: FEAR - (also known as: uh-oh) - This is where doubt begins, where the mind comes
back from shopping, yells at the heart, binds and gags it to a nice lounge chair and allows
guilt, failure, and remembrances of things past to sit in for a nice game of bridge. This is where
you fear what you need most. If itʼs a person you love, you fear appearing foolish in front of
them. If itʼs a sport, you fear being foolish in front of many, many people at the same time. And
you begin to think: Oh no, what if Iʼm wrong? What if this stinks? What if my heart has blinders
on? Itʼs had blinders on before. In fact it had dark heavy patches all over it. How cananyone
love me if I donʼt love myself? I mean, I love myself, there are just parts of me that could use
improvement. Iʼm not demeaning myself, I have relatives who do that.

5. ACT 4: DISGUST - (and the strange desire to eat everything in sight, hide in your room
and watch old Gidget movies with friends from high school) - Now comes that
unavoidable time when you say to anyone who will listen: What the heck am I doing,
anyway? If itʼs a person you love, first you only hate their foulest inadequacies, then you
start hating their good points as well. If itʼs running you love, you start to hate hills,
sidewalks, and bad weather, and soon anything that slightly resembles a bump,
concrete or a small breeze. I canʼt believe I ever said I felt this way. I must have been
dreaming! Wait, this is no dream. This is a film noir movie, and one of those really dark
ones too. I mean, this is love? This is what they warn you about when youʼre 11 and
naïve? Or 32 and more naïve?

6. ACT 5: TRUTH - (love is hard work. and sometimes, hard work can really hurt) - Love is a
game. If they didnʼt tell you before, we will tell you now. Love is a game and if you play,
you either win, lose or get ejected before the game is over. There are no ties. Maybe
youʼll lose and learn some great meaningful answer from it all (like if itʼs too good to be
true, it is). Itʼs easy to love something when you donʼt have to work at it. Itʼs harder when it
asks something of you, you just might be afraid to give. Give it anyway. The heart is the
most resilient muscle. It is also the stupidest. So if this love youʼve found is good to you,
hold it, shout about it. If it isnʼt then maybe you should just become very good friends.

7. ACT 6: THE FINALE - (also known as the big whopperdoodle or the most important part of
this whole damn thing) - So this is love, as demanding and nourishing and difficult as it can
be and as strong and wise as it makes you become. There is something to be gained from
commitment. There are rewards for staying when you would rather leave. And there is
something to be said for running up that hill when you would rather slide down it. And so, let
love come perch upon your shoulder, and do not turn it away. You do the tango.