7. When the man started to see his future wife, things were stop-and-go and then stop again. One of their early dates was a camping trip. The man’s future wife was going camping with eight of her closest friends, and the man was welcome to join them. It seemed the man’s future wife didn’t want a date. She wanted a friend—a friend who liked camping, which the man didn’t. But the man went along because the heart is foolish.

One by one, the man’s future wife’s friends pulled out of the camping trip, so that soon it was just the man and his future wife and one of his future wife’s friends, who happened to have the same first name as the man and had known the man’s future wife since they were 16. It was the three of them in a pup tent made for two; the man was the odd man out. The man’s future wife had forgotten her toothbrush, so the man offered her his. It was the single romantic gesture in a wholly unromantic weekend. The man and his future wife, the man was sure, would never see each other again.

Two weeks later, the man ran into his future wife in the rain, and it was as if they’d had a one-night stand. Here was a girl who had used his toothbrush, and now they couldn’t so much as speak. When he got home, the man phoned his future wife and said, “What happened? I thought we liked each other. I thought you liked me.” The man was so scared he thought he might hyperventilate. Because what if his future wife didn’t like him back? The man wouldn’t be able to live with the humiliation. You need to make yourself vulnerable, the man told himself, because there is no love without vulnerability. That was why the man made that phone call.

This is the part of the story that’s not true. It was the man’s future wife who made that phone call. She was the one who said those words. But the man, being a man, wished he had said them. He was thinking of them, but he needed someone to show him how.

From “The Seven Most Vulnerable Moments in Any Man’s Life,” by Joshua Henkin

Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down
in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language
—even the phrase “each other”—
do not make any sense.

RUMI

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable.”

MADELEINE L’ENGLE