Love Has No Size: The Heart Is Adjusted

When it comes to love, our hearts adapt and value to it. What really matters is that a couple is in love, not what the world thinks of them. It does not matter how long we have been together, or that you are from Mali and I am from Poland, or that you are tall and I am short, that you are thin and I am not… Because passion has nothing to do with size and have no time for other people’s assessment.

Let’s admit it, we live in a social reality where being different makes people uncomfortable . Anyone who dares to crush the mold and deviate from expectations, or from what is normal, will be appointed immediately. We are shaped by a society that still whispers when she is much older than he is. We live in a world where the happy, cheerful young woman who holds hands with an older man is seen as one who does not feel love, but only has greed in his heart.

Not everyone can tell how the two people holding hands really feel. Unlike the people who talk behind their backs (since they are usually not brave enough to say it face to face), the two only feel happiness. It does not matter if one person is tall and the other is short, or if they are of gender, or if one of them is 100 kilos and the other person is very thin… The couple will walk through the street, like an icebreaker through the Arctic of norms sea, and split the iceberg of prejudice in two.

At least that’s the way it should be.

A brave love, the love where prejudice does not matter

Mildred and Richard Loving fell in love when she was 11 and he was 17. They were very young, no one disagrees, but it was far from the biggest problem. This was the 50s, they were in Virginia, and she was the daughter of a black man and a woman from the Rappahannock tribe.

Richard, on the other hand, had European ancestors. At that time, a terrible law was in force, the Racial Integrity Act. It was a shameful law that made a difference between white people and “colored people” and the law said they could not marry each other. If they did, there were only two options: imprisonment or deportation.

But none of these barriers extinguished their love. When Mildred turned 18 in 1958, they decided to get married. One year later, when she was pregnant, a neighbor reported them and they divorced. Richard Loving was imprisoned. It was not until 1964 that Mildred Loving, who was in a desperate situation, decided to write an emotional and courageous letter to Robert Kennedy, who put her in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

If there is one thing that should definitely  shock us in this story, it is that it happened only 50 years ago. Another shocking fact is that such steps in the right direction, just like legalizing gay marriage, are events that take so long to achieve. And they all have really dramatic, tragic stories behind them.

But even though it is hard to believe, there are many studies that say that both marriages consisting of different races and marriages for gays still suffer from all our prejudices and from the weight of being judged and looked down upon.

The heart makes all the differences and criticisms invisible

Love goes far beyond what Antoine de Saint-Exúpery said in The Little Prince . It does not just mean that we both look in the same direction. We must also face each other every day to nurture our “couple consciousness”. We must invest in four points that characterize a strong, happy relationship: commitment, cooperation, communication and community (or intimacy).

These are the places where the couple finds the strength to speed up the boat fast enough to break the social barrier of criticism and prejudice. Because if there’s one thing that’s really tragic, something you want to regret on your last day, is that you were not brave, that you did not love when you could and should have, that you did not take advantage of the opportunity that rarely comes two times.

Only we know what suits our heart, what warms us, what comforts our soul, and what makes us smile. We walk through society and hold hands with our lover like an icebreaker in a sea of ​​hypocrisy. We are like colorful kites that do not need wind to fly…