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Hello, Garrison, I'm 32 and

January 29, 2004 |

Hello, Garrison,
I'm 32 and feel that married life may be passing me by. What should a shy person do? I mean, I can join clubs and take classes and otherwise insinuate myself into society, but then... how do I show myself to be the caring, sort of exciting, fun person that I am? My little brother is my date to your Valentine's Day show in Spartanburg, SC. Thank you... for everything!
—Julie

Julie,
I'm glad you'll be at the Valentine's Day show, and I hope that all the love songs don't weigh heavily on you. Romance is just an operatic form of friendship, a conversation between two people that keeps rolling on. There are all sorts of ways that two people can fall into that, but I don't think you should be looking for a fall: I think you should go about enjoying your life to the fullest, which is what we should all do, live joyfully and cut our losses, dump as much baggage as we can, give up regrets, take long walks, get our hearts pounding, seek out the people who make us unaccountably happy and steer clear of self-pity and—well, you know what I mean. This all applies to me as much as to you. You could find a disastrous marriage tomorrow if you wanted that, but you don't. What you want is to be brave and funny and good, so do we all, and tomorrow, my dear, is a new day.

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