Have you ever been to the Nashville Zoo? Well, we thought we'd go check it out yesterday, so everyone packed into a few cars and we drove out and payed the small fee. We don't do "different" very often, so anything new is smiled upon in my book. The problem is, you see, we are very poor people. Every dollar earned goes to paying bills or (if we're lucky) food. I don't know how some guys do it. They talk about making surplus money in college. In the meanwhile, I'm workin and classin it up and not seeing one stationary dime. Whatever, I'm sidetracking.
The zoo was nice, but it had me a bit bothered. I was looking at these animals and I realized I had no real feeling of interest in them. They were in cages doing the only thing that their space permitted. They sat or paced back and forth or just went to the back to try and hide from all of the people coming and going. Basically, they were only an image of the animals they represented. I felt much the same. When we got to the monkeys all I could think about was how it felt in Africa having real monkeys come and eat out of my hands. At the zoo they were safely placed behind baracades for their and our protection. When we came to the alligator exhibit, they were all very small and swimming around a 10 square metered pool. In Africa I went swimming in a river where grown alligators lived and later that night, I was able to feed some of them (not myself, of course, but by luring fish with bread and having the alligators, in turn, eat the fish). I don't mean to seem like a tree-hugger by saying this (because I love eating steak and not using public transportation) but the zoo seemed kinda lame.
Speaking of lame, how about growing pains? I know that they pay off, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. It's funny though. I hit my growth spurt, but I never remember having any kind of growing pains. My growth worked like this. I would measure myself after having it pointed out to me (usually by people I hadn't seen in a few months) that I had grown "at least two or three inches since the last time we met!" It was a vicious circle, but with no pain that I can remember. I bring all of that up because, not that I'm physically growing anymore (cuz I'm not), but everything else seperate of my body is, and it hurts! I'd say that right now I'm feeling slight discomfort but with complete awareness that it will only grow worse in the next few months. I'm learning new things this semester that are throwing me completely off balance. I'm getting older, I'm getting more responsibility with every tick of the clock, and I'm being forced to learn.
I think the hardest thing to learn, at least spiritually, is where the line stands between what you need and need not understand (in an educational sense). As an audio engineer (in training) not only do I know a great deal about how sound works, I also understand it through experience. But what do you do when you come to something as complex as love. I'm so tired of mulling over love within the relationship of a man and woman. Love is there, yes, but only partly, not completely. I can't put love in a test tube and measure it. There are no laws governing how it works (sorry Joshua Harris). There's a good deal of crap on tv that tries to convince you of how it works and how great it feels when you achieve it, but that's all bs too. You can read it in scripture and know what it is. You can know who God is, but to know God is different. Love must be one of those things that we allow ourselves to be satisfied in that it exists and can only be given. Sometimes it is hard to know that you are loved, sometimes it is easy. Sometimes we hold love up to our ideals and if it doesn't fit, we write it off. It's funny too. In all of the philosophies I have read (and given, maybe I just haven't read enough) they all seem to forget about the existence of love. Kant would be completely right in his theories about life if love did not exist. Love is such a huge part of our lives. And what is more, love exists out of the potential for rejection. A man ASKS a woman to marry him not just to simply ask a question, but to stand at the threshold of a whole new level of rejection, giving her the opportunity to reject or love him, all the while making the potential love that much more potent. Though in some world cultures a man still posesses the right to command a woman to marry him, he can never forcefully bring her to love him because he has not given her the ability to reject him.
My brain is about to explode. Sometimes I think my education to be fighting against me. Some of the most ignorant people in the world don't know what I know about love, but they know love much more intimately. So here I am trying to understand that all I NEED understand is that I have no control over the principles of love because they are too vast for the greatest of minds to comprehend (and mine is sub-par). I, however, do posess the power to love as well as the power to reject, but why, then, should I reject when I, myself, have ultimately been loved?
Again, my brian is going to explode. I guess I'd better go press it between two pillows so that I don't mess up my nicely painted walls with grey matter. That would be a shame to wake up to. Peace and love.
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