2.1 Why Love Should Make You Laugh
When you think about it, there is something so whimsical and amusing
about love. It’s one of the only qualities or emotions in people that shifts us
out of being boring individuals, or people stuck in mediocrity and routine.
Love has some special power that subverts the natural tendencies of this
world, the kind that constricts us to stay on certain, dull paths.
I’ve always wondered why love is so silly, so off the wall in its
expression, and I’ve found that it’s part of its foundation. I know many
couples who are the definition of boring because they don’t talk to each
other or do anything fun like take a night out on the town or make a meal
that’s different than something you warm in the microwave for three
minutes. They just sit and watch television with a world of space between
them. Between the two, there’s no slight grace of the hand, no endearing
words spoken, and not even a warm glance to communicate love when
words just won’t cut it. This boggles my mind, and I know this is just the
dynamic of some couples, but I can’t imagine a love where the greatest risk
taken is who gets to control the remote.
A love characterized by boredom and a fear of the ridiculous is
something I’m not sure I want.
This might be my own personal preference, but I believe if we all dig
hard enough, we’ll find that love, at least at its conception, transforms us into
17
people who we are not so familiar with; or in other words, better, more fun
versions of ourselves. If we allow love to whisk us away, I’m sure it’d make us
into silly people.
I’ve attached this idea to one of my own definitions of love: that love is
characterized by the whimsical and ridiculous. And by living according to
this definition, it’s helping me not get stuck in dullness or monotony with my
love story.
It’s incredibly easy for us to become boring people. When we dive into
a difficult day at work and let reality deal its blows to our optimism and
attitude, we come back to join our loved ones, only to sink into a time where
we shut off our minds and become about as entertaining as a potato. We slip
off our shoes, melt into comfort, all the while leaving our loved one craving
attention and adventure.
This is all too easy to do. It’s easy to live a dull life of routine where
reality zaps our energy and sense of fun. It’s easy to be boring.
But this, I’ve learned, should never be the foundation of our love
stories. There’s no excuse, no “I’ve worked this hard” or “we have to take
care of the kids” mentality that should ever deplete us of our silliness.
Love is silly. It’s loud when the world wants it to be quiet. It’s reckless
when others would rather promote safety. It’s creative when life becomes
repetitive. And it’s that one, crazy emotion sprouting within us that, for a
moment, takes us out of character. It reveals us to adventure, spontaneity,
and ridiculousness, in a world that wants us to stay bored.
Truth is, a love that is not silly is not a love worth having.
__________
But I didn’t always have this as a definition for love. In fact, I didn’t
even believe life had a whimsical quality to it.
18
I wasn’t exactly the most boring individual on the face of the planet,
but I also wasn’t much of a fun person to be with per se. My friends in
college would often rag on me for not going with them to do some daring,
yet safe, college stunt with them. I would shake my head no, and when they
would leave without me, I would crawl in my bed and read a book.
Sometimes, I would have thoughts that I was missing out, but missing out
was worth it if I didn’t get physically hurt or embarrassed.
I think my boringness went along with my little self-esteem issues at
the time. The less I put myself out there, the less I got hurt, and the less I got
hurt, the better I felt; or at least, I thought I would feel better. Eventually,
the feelings of missing out overwhelmed my feelings of comfort as I looked
out at my peers and imagined myself offering the most boring story ever told.
It seemed that everyone else around me had better stories they were
telling with their lives. Many of my friends went on mission trips around the
world as if it was their day job. I only left the country on vacation. Others
were involved in a million organizations, impacting the culture of our school.
I was only involved in an on-campus ministry. Many people were willing to
go out on a Wednesday night. Wednesday night for me was the time LOST
came on.
The students around me weren’t letting life pass them by. Just as I was
starting to feel bad about this, a senior student told me, “Take advantage of
your time in college. It goes by fast.”
That pretty much hit the nail on the head for me. I needed adventure.
And that’s what led me to Carly. After all, what better adventure
could there be than love?
__________
19
Carly and I were both sophomores in college when we met. And at
the time, I was part of an all-male acapella group called Madison Project.
It was honestly odd that I ended up with these men, because like I said
before, I was a non-risk sort of guy. Joining the group was part of my move
to be more adventurous in my college career; and I don’t regret the decision
for a minute. I loved these men, because these men helped me step outside of
my rigid, boring self so many times. They made me into a more adventurous
person, just by being around them.
Speaking of adventure, the night I met Carly was the night we
accepted new members into our group. As we were awaiting the answer for
who was going to be in our group, the men and I paced around a room in
the Music Building on campus. Some of the men were drawing on the
whiteboard while some jumping around with excitement. And then there
was me, taking turns sitting and pacing at different spots around the room.
Suddenly, the door burst open with our President waving a sheet of
paper with our new members on them.
“We have four new members!” he cried.
We leaped in the air, did our manly grunts and squeals of excitement.
And then, we rushed to our cars and took off driving around campus at 3 in
the morning.
The Project men and I were the epitome of silly, especially when
moments like this came along. We were brewing with jubilee, letting out
high-pitched yells of thrill and the occasional bouts of roughhousing to
express our happiness.
We called the new members “newbies”, and we drove to each of their
dorms, telling them of the good news, singing to them, and throwing them in
20
our army of five cars. When we picked up the final person and shoved him
in our car, someone said, “How about we take the shortcut to IHOP?”
Going to IHOP was our tradition when we received newbies. Each of
the seven acapella groups would meet at IHOP with their newbies, and we
would parade them around to the tables, showing off on how well they did in
their auditions and how stunning and cute they look. And then, we would
stuff their face with pancakes, all at 4 in the morning. It was a magical time,
a time I would treasure.
We all knew what was meant when our friend stated the shortcut as a
possibility. The shortcut was across the college quad, a pristine green field
surrounded by beautiful stone buildings, the gem of our campus. At the
mouth of the green field was the Wilson Steps, and that’s where Carly was.
Carly had just been accepted into the all-female Christian acapella
group, Into Hymn (acapella groups love puns), and as part of their initiation,
they would pray together with candles surrounding them on the Wilson
Steps. It was a picturesque scenery the girls would set up for their newbies,
ensuring that they would remember it forever. And Carly certainly did
remember it. She was blindfolded on the Wilson Steps, overwhelmed with
emotions bursting inside her. Then, all of a sudden, when she expected to
hear the girls tell her to remove her blindfold, what she heard instead were
the loud cries of men honking their cars as they zoomed by.
The Project men and I laughed as we drove along the brick right past
the Into Hymn girls. I could’ve sworn that I looked up and locked eyes with
an Into Hymn girl glaring at us with rage. But, we veered our cars to travel
right down the middle of the quad, and soon the girls were masked in the
darkness and faint glow of candles behind us.
21
The sprinklers beat against our windows as we drove in zig-zags across
the field. Mud flung up on our cars like spit from a raging madman. I rolled
up my window every time a sprinkler looked like it was about to attack us.
And when we were free from their onslaught, I would stick my head out the
window and yell at the top of my lungs.
And that’s when I saw them.
Up ahead, surrounding the first four cars, were police cars zooming
off the main road with their lights flashing red and blue. I was in the fifth car,
and we were enough behind to steer the car away and go driving back down
the opposite end of the field, towards the girls. By this time, the girls were
done praying and were laughing at us trying to escape the police. But inside
the car, I was a mess.
“We need to stop the car!” I frantically yelled, my conscious
screaming guilt on the inside.
But then, I turned to look behind us and found zero police cars
chasing after us. Instead, there was only one man on his bicycle, pedaling
hard for his life.
“Aw,” I said as if I were looking at a helpless puppy. “We have to stop.
Look how hard he’s trying!”
Eventually we stopped, and the police officer on the bike nearly
collapsed on the ground when he came to a halt. He trudged over to the
driver’s window, still panting heavily from the ride. We all had guilty looks
while he held a stern expression. We awaited the verdict.
Yet, what he said instead surprised us.
“You’re free to go,” he said wiping the sweat off his forehead.
22
We were shocked. My jaw dropped. The newbie sitting next to me
had a demeanor that shouted his satisfaction with the night. We exchanged
glances all around before we finally chose to spoke.
“Why?” the driver asked.
“Trust me,” the officer began. “I’ve seen worse things happen on this
quad.”
As we drove off, I slumped down in seat, relieved yet still frightened by
the moment. We were the only car from our group to be released to IHOP,
and because we were, I was able to meet Carly.
__________
When we reached IHOP, I had time to walk around and meet each
newbie, and there she was, dressed in all black pajamas sitting in a booth
with Into Hymn girls.
It’s crazy how I met my future wife in that moment. At that time, I
didn’t believe in love to even think that was a possibility. But who knew that
this one encounter would change my perspective on the subject entirely?
Who knew that everything I had believed about love was about to change?
My friend from the group introduced her to me.
“Hey Neal! Carly lives in our same building! On the third floor!”
That caught my attention. We turned to each other, and a silly smile
stretched across her face. In that moment, I was honestly embarrassed, and
so was she. She was embarrassed for a more valid reason than I was because
she was in her pajamas. Yet for me, I was worried she was judging me for
trying to run from the police. I knew she was one of the girls laughing on the
Wilson Steps that night. I was embarrassed and nervous she thought of me
as a delinquent running from the cops.
23
But she just laughed with a sweet smile, her golden hair whipping
around her shoulder as her laugh grew more intense. My petty fears and
nervousness melted away in that laughter.
This is the thing with embarrassment and silliness in our love: if we
never do anything of risk that doesn’t warrant a bit of embarrassment, we’ll
cultivate a love empty of laughter. And I read somewhere that laughter is so
healthy for any relationship. As I thought about that, I couldn’t figure out
why. But as we were laughing in that moment, it became so clear to me.
Laughter, especially when shared between two people, bonds people in an
appealing spirit of friendship. It ties us together, like two threads distant until
they wrap around in a knot. Laughter, friendship, and silliness draw us
together to experience something beautiful and fun.
There are days now when Carly and I need a bit of silliness to break
us out of our mundane routine of living. I grab her hands, sway her from
side to side, jump up and down with her, until she laughs. When she does, I
know we’re once again reminded of our friendship, something so
foundational to our love.
For a brief moment, a little bit of silliness reminds us why we’ve fallen
in love. Carly and I fell in love because we were the best of friends who
helped each other draw out the wonder to life. Friendship, strong enough to
outlast the dreariness of reality and remain silly, is why we feel love and stay
in love.
That night when we met, we didn’t fall in love at first sight, but I knew
then that this was the beginning of something special.
2.2 What You Can and Can’t Control About Love
24
Sometimes, I believe love is like a slot machine at Chuck E. Cheeses. If I
move around the play area and earn enough tickets, then I can get the prize
I want. The pursuit of love to me was a series of calculated steps, one right
after the other, to get the desired result. If I earned enough tickets, love
would work in my favor.
But then, I watched the movie Hitch. No joke. I watched that movie
and took notes. This movie was about Will Smith being a consultant who
helps guys be with the girl of their dream, and for some reason, I entered
into this movie thinking that I would walk away with tips to chasing girls.
Instead, the greatest lesson I walked away with is that with love, there are no
calculated steps. Though Will Smith pulled out all his classic moves on
pursuing his girl, they didn’t work. There is not much we control about love.
There are so many tactics floating around with love today, such as
always buying dinner, holding open doors, not barraging your date with
questions, etc. etc. I held onto this tactics like they were scripture from the
holy book of dating. Yet now, I don’t believe in these methods as much, not
because I think these tactics are bad, but rather because I know love is not
something you can absolutely control.
The things you can control about love are the ways in which you
pursue the apple of your eye. But the rest is what you leave to fate, chance,
or whatever you like to call it. Love is complicated like that.
I honestly didn’t know much of what it looked like to be interested in a
girl and get to know her in an appropriate manner. The idea of a pursuit was
frightening to me. It took me back to times when I would lay my heart out
on the line, only to receive a rejection, which ended up making my heart
even more resistant to love.
25
The pursuit is even more frightening when you think about your
inability to control all of it. Love would be so easy to believe in if all we had
to do was follow a number of steps, like following instructions for assembling
furniture from IKEA. If we could somehow calculate every move and be
able to predict what was going to happen, love wouldn’t be so scary. But the
difficult truth is, we can’t control everything. What we can control is how we
pursue, but what we can’t control is how love pursues us.
For me, it took a large amount of courage to know that I couldn’t
control every aspect of the pursuit, and still do it anyways. It also took a great
amount of faith to not obsess over what I couldn’t control about love, and
trust it to work out for the better.
But after knowing Carly for a while, I thought I would give this whole
pursuit thing a shot.
__________
The night after I met Carly, I sat in the living room of my suite, just
two floors down from her, and told my roommate:
“There’s a really cute girl living just two floors above us.”
“Really?” he said. “Pull her up on Facebook.”
My eyes widened and my brows rose. “I don’t know her last name,” I
confessed, until an idea slapped me across the face. “Oh! I’ll search the Into
Hymn girls’ walls to see if they added her.”
Her profile was shining like a gem buried in a field on the first profile I
pulled up. It popped up on my screen, and I turned the computer around so
my roommate could see a picture of her smiling on top of a cliff. My
roommate chuckled and turned around back into his room saying, “That’s
cool, man.”
26
I continued to look at her Facebook page, infatuated, but not getting
my hopes up too high.
There would be glorious days every once in a while where we would
walk out of our dorm building at the same time, and exchange small talk.
Sometimes, I would see her trudging ahead at a fast pace, her stuffed purple
backpack bouncing along her back, and I would rush to catch up to her.
“Oh hey!” I remember saying to her once when I caught up to her
along a path.
“Hey!” she said in a gleeful tone. I wondered if this was a tone she
took with every stranger she met, a tone she used with friends, or even
better, if this was an expression she gave to people she liked. Turned out, she
had the same tone when another friend walked past her and she said hello to
him. I was slightly sad.
“Where are you headed?” I asked.
“I’m just trying to catch the bus,” her pace quickened. I thought she
was avoiding me. But to make sure, I started walking faster.
“You’re almost there!” I laughed.
“Yes I am!” What awkward conversation.
I had times to redeem myself on other days when we saw each other
walk out of the building. I always felt I was trying to catch up with her
though, like she was a girl on a mission, intent on getting to a certain
location at a specific time. I naturally walk slow, so to try and keep up with
her was exhausting.
But this is what you do when you’re interested in someone: you try to
rush up to where they are. You quicken your own pace so that for one
moment, it would seem as though you’re walking together. It works like this
for people with different maturity levels. The guy or girl with the lesser
27
maturity would feel compelled to grow up faster if motivated by their interest
in the more mature individual. Infatuation sparks movement.
__________
We carried on like this for so long. She would be up ahead, enjoying
life, and I would be trying to catch up with her, pursuing her down the path
to spend a second of bliss with her.
There was one time where we managed once again to walk out at the
same time, like fate allotted this time for us. She had a radiant expression on
her face, shining as if she was Moses coming down from the mountain after
seeing God. I was so captivated, so thrilled to find out what secret she held.
“You look happy today,” I said, mimicking her smile on my face.
“I am happy! Last night, some of my friends asked me to live with
them in a house next year.”
“Oh! Where will you be living?”
“In a house called Shiloh,” she said.
She was about to continue with her statement, but I stopped her right
there. My face stretched out into a look of jubilee, and she did a small laugh,
the kind you give when you’re not entirely sure what’s happening.
“Do you know that place?” she asked.
“I’m living right next door!”
It was true. Just a few days ago, my suitemates and I signed the
contract to move into the house literally five steps away from her own.
If you saw the two houses in person, you would see why this was such
an odd coincidence. The two houses were in the middle of a bustling
downtown area, packed with stores on both sides. If you kept walking down
the sidewalk in front of our houses, you would reach the town square, which
was complete with our favorite restaurants and go-to spots. Also, across from
28
the houses was a cemetery, holding decayed Civil War heroes and slaves in
its grounds. My housemates and I tried going over there many times, but
random caretakers would come, spot us with their hawk eyes, and chase us
out. Surely, it was a strange place to put two houses, but within that one
block was a vibrant and eclectic spirit defining the area. It gave our choice of
residence character, and we relished in its witty delights.
By the time the year was coming to a close, I seriously started
considering the depth of my feelings for Carly. She was wonderful, definitely
worth the pursuit. But for some reason, I felt that I was hitting a wall every
time I tried to approach her. She was running off, consumed by her busy
schedule, while I was just busy chasing after her, yearning for some quality
time to spend with her.
I’m a person who hates running. I hate chasing af