Disclaimer: it ain't pretty

There are just some ideas that smack you so hard in the chest it becomes difficult to breathe.

In the past, I've looked over the Grand Canyon, overwhelmed that anything could be that big, and thought about myself, "How could something so small mean anything in this vast, vast world?" I was fifteen. Later, I was to rediscover theatre and realize that, as small and insignificant as a human is, when you put us in a group, we can move something. And something isn't nothing.

Or when I was 11 and noticed that my life's choices probably didn't mean much, as life moved on whether you were prepared or not. I had a bit of a identity crisis at that point, which has since turned into a curious pattern of being able to redefine myself in different environments.

I've gone through the phase where I thought that everything I've ever believed in is wrong, and I've done the "whatever I do, it doesn't matter, nothing really matters" moments. I won't bore you with details. Suffice to settle the scores with the simple fact that I've come out of these mind-f**ks altered, and yet the same.

Now, living with the presence of a happy couple who has shared over 50 years of their lives together, I wonder, when did I stop believing in love? Did I ever?

As a child of divorced parents, I got a first-hand account of how love between a couple can fail. I've watched it fail parents, I've seen it fail siblings, I've felt it fail friends. Lord only knows I've failed it and it has failed me. So why do we trust in this concept that continues to fail us? Why do we hope for better when precious few of us have ever seen, much less experienced, it succeed? What am I missing?

The subtext to all this is that as of late I have reason to believe that, while it's no picnic, it does have a way of existing in a strange, inexplicable way.

Cognitive dissonance all over the floor!