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Learning from the World

Everyone dies. It's what they do. What good does caring do anyone?

It's a paraphrase from Sherlock the BBC series. I've been watching it (again) whilst waiting on planes and other modes of transportation. It's delightfully well written and acted and I find myself fully immersed in the programs. I also, incidentally, like that they're so long - it makes time for a story arc to fully develop and for characters to grow and change.

Travelling the world does things for your perspective, whether it's the conversations you have with other brave travelers (because let's be honest, traveling is a brave thing - not in the sense of having to avoid dangers, because we mostly live in a fairly safe world, but rather in the sense of leaving one's comfort zone and getting out into the world; the farther away from home you travel, the more brave one must become) (although, with the advent of jet travel, some of that bravery is mitigated by the speed at which one travels - maybe travelling by train and boat was slower and less reliable, but it was still part of the adventure and made one adventurous) or if one can get a taste of the local flavor (knowing that living someplace foreign is healthy if terribly difficult at times)...

And I put that in the perspective of what's happened in Florida. Because it's just tragic. It really is. And while there's a certain kind of fatalism about the quote from Sherlock above, I'm interested in the question - what good does it do?

What good does it do to care?

It's not as easy a question as it seems. I'm still thinking about it (obviously). I don't know that I have any conclusions. But what I do know is this:

I can't not care. I am compelled to care by something that is as much a part of me as breathing. I can sooner force myself to stop breathing than to stop caring. I love. I care.

I love you. With all my heart and soul, I do. You are glorious and wonderful and beautiful - which is the right term - beautiful... Full of beauty... Perfection in your complete humanity, any alteration diminishing what is so delightfully radiant...

I will never, ever stop loving you. Even when you hurt me so much I can scarcely think... I stand with my heart ripped asunder and my soul exposed and raw... And I love you. Intensely. Completely. With utter and reckless abandon...

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