so why do we do it?

as I was sitting in my new favorite spot in the antioch library (its like a living room...how did I not know about this when I was carless and LIVING at school first semester?!) when a gentleman came in to use the television set near my comfy couch. We had seen each other often around campus and even said hi but had not offically met...he introduced himself and we started talking. Somehow we got from the joys of the end of semester to the environment to the mountain gorillas of africa, to rwanda – which is where he is from, to my trip to africa, to the differences in communication styles between cultures, to friendship, to relationship, to LOVE.
Funny how everything really does come down to Love...no matter where you start Love is where you eventually end up....between lovers...between friends...between strangers....
between communities....between systems...between paradigms....
between generations....between moments.
No matter what you are buying or selling, doing, saying or believing...in every human transaction Love is that something that we are all trying to figure out how to give and hoping desperately to get.

This beautiful stranger sat with me and instead of watching his video he told me all about how he didn't know anything about Love because he had never had it, never felt it. He told me in great detail about all the aspects of Love he didn't know or understand.
After about half an hour of hearing things like “Love is about learning what matters to someone and making it matter to you too....Love means considering considering how you impact someone else's happiness.....Love makes you crazy, its terrible, because it is everything! It becomes what you eat, what you sleep, what you think, all that matters!....Love is being there even when you don't know how...Love is hard...” I finally said,
“Sounds to me like you have a much better idea than you think!”
He laughed and went on to say he felt he should understand it more....work harder to figure it out. I had to take a deep breath and a long look into that mirror he held up to the foolish image of what I have looked like far too often this year....
Then I said to myself, just out loud so as not to exclude my new friend, “I don't think we get to understand it because it is bigger than us. Its not something we were built to understand, its something we are built to do. It doesn't make sense, it just works. It's hard...it's really hard...”
“So why do we do it?” my holy messenger of wise reflection asked, surely just for effect at this point (nice touch by the way God.)

“Because....because its crazy and its hard and at its very worst it still feels to much better than giving up.” I heard myself reply.

Damn. And we wonder why I can get my neuroscience homework done.







since i don't have the internet i do all things web at once when i get to the library...like post blogs i wrote instead of doing homework while checking my facebook...the following quote was on someone's status as i was posting this blog and it seemed appropriate...its ridiculous...and kind of exactly true.


Love is like a booger. You keep picking at it until you get it, then wonder what to do with it.