A fifty year success

From the day we take our first breath to the day we take our last, one thing controls our life more than anything else -- love. Whether it is love of God, love of country or love of another person, it is an emotion we can't escape and can't live without. \nWe spend our lives seeking it, trying to achieve it and attempting to understand it. Sometimes we triumph and frequently we fail. \nSo what does it take to make love successful?\nThis is a question scholars and poets alike have pondered throughout the ages. And I marvel at it now, as my family prepares for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. \nIn a world where a fair majority of the people you know will have at least one marriage end in divorce, and getting a divorce is about as easy as going to the store for milk, it's hard to believe that any husband and wife team could survive for half of a century. It makes me wonder if they're just crazy, or if perhaps in our fast-paced world we've let the strongest of all feelings become one of our weakest abilities. Perhaps we've forgotten how to love.\nSpending your entire life with one person is a remarkable and noble thing. When you have truly lived your life with someone through sickness and through health, in good times and bad and eventually until death do you part, there is a respectability that is hard to deny. It is a goal that much of our society sets for their relationships, but one that so few achieve.\nMarriage isn't for everyone -- but for those who choose it, I hope that my grandparents prove to them that it can work. It's not that every step in life we take with our loved one has to be easy, but there is always a way to get through and come out for the better. Two people can face times of splendor and times of turmoil, especially when they face them together.\nSome might find it hard to imagine spending an entire lifetime loving one single person and even ask why. Others will think it's a beautiful story and commend them for their commitment to each other. I simply think about how amazing it is for someone to look back on the vast majority of their lives and tell stories of how for over 50 years, they saw the world change. They saw wars. They saw scandals. They saw great new inventions like the computer, and great new achievements like walking on the moon. And for these fifty years, they can say they saw it together\nTo me, there seems to be a certain comfort in being able to look back at your life and always seeing that one constant someone in your memories. It's not easy to be in love and this is something we can all probably agree on. It requires sacrifice, commitment, patience and understanding. It takes the power to look past the days when you wonder if it's all really worth it -- to know that it will be, if that's how you make it. It's so easy to give up in times of hardship and struggle, but for those who choose to carry on, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Perhaps that's why they call it a Golden Anniversary.\nIn 1953, two kids in Michigan promised to love each other for a lifetime. They began a journey that gave them children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. And for my grandparents, and I'm sure everybody else's, I think that's all they ever asked for. Family means everything to them, and that's why they mean everything to us.