Romance is there when you’re with like-minded people. As we crested that last hill of the Inca Trail, we found ourselves staring down at the perfect postcard view of Machu Picchu. I don’t think we breathed for half an hour as we took in the awesomeness of the ruins. Sometimes silence is the only suitable conversation, and not everyone understands that. My traveling partner that day would become my wife.
Surround yourself with people who have this passion. There will be enough unromantics in your life — miserly bosses, cranky co-workers and those people jockeying for free food at Costco. But if you have a good core group of Romantics to welcome you in from the rain, your soul will survive another day.
Romance was on that hill when I was 17. We may not have known it then, but she was there.
So, to those graduating from preschool to kindergarten, elementary to middle school and high school to college or the great beyond, I say this:
