Dear SJC, what if you hadn't followed your heart to Taiwan?

Would the legal market be any less unkind today? One day (full disclosure: it may take decades), I think that you'll look back at that time without regret. A hard lesson about love and "growing up," is learning the risks of it all.

I am thinking back to this time of year three years ago. I was standing in my parent's drive way with a boy I had spent nearly two years in varying degrees of romantic relations. In a few days, I would leave for graduate school in London, and I threw down my ultimatum. I wanted to "stay together." The answer I got? "No, I've never really had feelings for you." I didn't want to believe him, but just a week later, as I was sitting alone in my new London flat, I saw the photos of him and his new girlfriend. These were the days of facebook gifts: the little cartoon hearts, cats, and flowers flooded my news, making the reality of the situation inescapable. I really did mean nothing to him.

And luckily, I was an ocean and a continent away and proceeded a dream year in my favorite city in the world. Sometimes I think about what if that conversation had panned out differently. What if he did return my feelings? I'm not sure that I would have had the courage to go.

So, you may be thinking now- I have no London to distract me. Not even a job to give me something new to complain about. But, you will sometime soon and from here on out, every new guy who happens to momentarily tame our hearts, we get to think: "Are you as good as a year in London?" or "Are you worth the suffering of lost momentum and professional opportunity?"

I can say with confidence, you are at the very least -- that much wiser.

What? I graduated?

This year is the year in which I should be starting my career. Of course, with the economy the way it is and my lack of job prospects growing dim in the horizon, there hasn't been much to celebrate lately.

Last year, I still thought that I could graduate and do anything. I thought that if I followed my heart to Taiwan, I would have a great time and still be able to find a great job. Before I went on my internship, I was in love, and totally naive. I came back more than slightly bitter, but wiser.

Dear California,

I spent Saturday afternoon driving to Ikea and watching Seinfeld with a boy that is somewhere in between being just my ex boyfriend and the love of my life. Such dramatic language for a Monday evening, I know. But when the mundane (buying household effects and watching re-runs of 90s television) becomes more appetizing than a trek around the world, there's something special there.

I'm struggling today to not ruin those few hours of domestic heaven with worry over "forever." He told me once "I don't love you. I don't see us lasting in the long term." (And yet here we are.) Sometimes, I feel like I am waiting for the other shoe to drop -- for him to leave like he said he wanted to do months ago. How I get by is remembering that today was happy, tomorrow could be too. These are gifts to be savored in the moment, rather than ruined by the lack of promise that it will last forever.

Pride is also quite the nemesis. Every now and then, I'd like to be one of those girls that's pined after and pursued. I want him to yield first and not feel like the ex girlfriend that maybe "just can't take a hint." Past a certain point, though, dwelling on things like this are more about power than about love.

Yeah. Love makes me an idiot, and I am somehow okay with that.

Lastly, from my ritual morning newspaper reading:

What is love, anyway?

Ah, best for last. If I were Spock from “Star Trek,” I would explain that human love is a combination of three emotions or impulses: desire, vulnerability and bravery. Desire makes one feel vulnerable, which then requires one to be brave.

Since I’m not Spock, I will tell a story.

Say you decide to adopt a baby girl in China. You receive her photo, put it on your refrigerator and gaze at it as the months pass, until finally you’re halfway around the world, holding her in your arms, tears of joy streaming down your face.

But later in your hotel room, after undressing her, you discover worrisome physical signs, in particular a scar on her spine. You call the doctor, then head to the hospital for examinations and CT scans, where you are told the following: she suffered botched spinal surgery that caused nerve damage. Soon she will lose all bladder and bowel control. Oh, and she will be paralyzed for life. We’re so sorry.

But the adoption agency offers you a choice: keep this damaged baby, or trade her in for a healthier one.

You don’t even know about the trials yet to come, about the alarming diagnoses she’ll receive back home, the terrifying seizures you’ll witness. Nor do you know about the happy ending that is years off, when she comes through it all and is perfectly fine. You have to decide now. This is your test. What do you do?

If you’re Elizabeth Fitzsimons, who told this story here one Mother’s Day, you say: “We don’t want another baby. We want our baby, the one sleeping right over there. She’s our daughter.”

That’s love. Anyone can have it. All it requires is a little bravery. Or a lot.

I wikipedia-d "love" today.

I'll have to take the author's word on this, but according to Eat Love Pray's Liz Gilbert, even people in the most dire of material circumstances still sit around and obsess with love. "Does he love me or not?" supposedly asked a group of Cambodian refugee women. I share in the author's wonderment... of all the the things these people had gone through, this is what stung the most?

On the flip side, being at the ripe age of 25, I find myself quite entrenched in the whirlwind of wedding season. I'm told it gets slightly less turbulent in about 5 years time, but right now, however, I am in awe of those among my peers who somehow have found it in themselves to publicly declare, "I will love you, forever." The cynic in me suspects that some of this lot are merely getting up there on the altar because it's the thing to do. Kind of like getting a college degree. But the cynic in me can't also help but observe the tenderness of these ceremonies-- the friend, who on normal circumstances I would (lovingly) characterize as an "ice queen," walking down the aisle visibly overcome with emotions.

There's something to this love thing. And while according to wikipedia, it can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people, the end story is kind of all the same. Most people will have experienced it sometime in their lives, and all people will have struggled with defining it. It seems that only after getting kicked in the gut a few times do we ever get brave enough to walk down the aisle in tears.