Hmm...what do I want to say about this?
I still maintain that it is a miracle that people ever get together. I never understood how some people always had a boyfriend/girlfriend, while my dating was always brief and sporadic. Throughout my college years I had such difficulty finding someone to connect with that I began to think I was cursed. Now, I think that part of the problem was that I was looking in all the wrong places. I thought I wanted someone like my father--and while it is true that my dad has many qualities that I like (such as a quirky sense of humor and a love of the arts), I don't think I would be happy with someone who placed so much emphasis on financial success=worth.
Why do I think it is a miracle that people ever couple off and get married? Because people are so complicated already. I can barely understand myself--it's a whole different plane to have to understand someone else. But we all seek and desire deep connections with other people--at least, I do. I don't like superficial people--I want to surround myself with people who think and feel deeply, and who I can share my deepest hopes and dreams with.
I think you also have to be at a certain place before you are ready. This is perhaps where divine intervention comes in. I almost took EUOL's class last year during Winter Semester. But I ended up taking Sally Taylor's writing class, because she was a full professor and when I saw that Brandon Sanderson was a only grad student I said, "Meh. Why would I waste my time in a class taught by a grad student with no experience?" (I didn't know that he had a book accepted for publication, or how huge that was.) But I don't know if I would have liked him then. I am much different now than I was a year ago. I also thought about going to TLE when I was a sophmore and junior, so around '00 and '01. If I had, I might have run into EUOL. Again, I don't know if I would have liked him then--I was VERY different before my mission. So was it divine intervention that I didn't meet EUOL until last Fall in Louise Plummer's writing class? Maybe. Perhaps. I think so.
Then again, EUOL invited me to be in his writing group after Louise's class. (He told me later it was because he didn't want me to disappear at the end of the semester.) Otherwise, I may have never seen him again--it happens all the time: You meet someone you like, but you never talk outside of class, and then the class ends and maybe you say "hi" when you pass them in the halls of the JKHB. But EUOL made sure that didn't happen. And then he got me and another person in his 318 class to start going out to eat after class, so we had more time to visit and get to know each other. My secret crush might have just stayed a crush if I hadn't had the opportunity to get to know him. But I was the first to ask him out on a "date" that was just the two of us. (I got tired of waiting.) So sometimes divine intervention needs a little help.
I guess I'm saying that relationships work because of both coincidences and chance meetings at the right time that I view to be divine intervention, followed by work and effort on the part of both people.
