In Psych. class,

the professor likes to ask people to share personal information for the sake of making a point, and, I think, for the sake of being unique and having a challenging approach in a psychology class. He usually precedes the question with, "If anyone is honest enough to say, who...?" 

Well, the other day, he asked, "Is anyone lonely?" I raised my hand without hesitation. Then, he followed with "Does anyone have a problem with love?" I did not raise my hand. I thought it peculiar that I had contrasting responses. Although I could admit to being lonely, I wouldn't say I have a problem with love. I think because I personify love as a whole concept and truth and felt it wrong to say I have a problem with it. It is what it is and I accept how it is, through the pain, through the loneliness.

A week earlier, I had the same essential thought. In a description of an afterlife in The Myth of Er by Plato and in many other descriptions of an afterlife, they speak of living the happiness of this life on a multiple scale. I tried to imagine what that might mean specifically to me. So I figured it would be to be in love void of heartache? And that didn't really make sense to me. Love is a process, much like life and nature. To experience it on an exclusively pleasurable level didn't seem complete. It brought me back to appreciating this life, this opportunity for all its pains and pleasures. And then I read something somewhere that asked, "Can there be love without pain?" I think there CAN BE, but I guess pain gives it something to be compared to. Something to accentuate its true significance.

To relate it to the current events of my life: a couple of days ago, I heard some news that bothered me later into the day and night. Luckily, an insightful caring friend said ever-so-beautifully and simply, "At least you got to love." Oh so true :). It reminded me that anything one goes through before, during, and AFTER is always worth it for the moment(s) of its existence.