it's a funny thing, falling in love...

i like to think of love as an action (not that kind of action); to me, love is an act of recognition, a realization that someone or something outside myself is as real as i am. this sort of realization is always "heartfelt," as they say, because it changes us: love changes our minds and our view of the universe, forever. i think what people usually mean by "love" is the reaction to that realization, which makes me want to start a trend of defining emotions based on their causes rather than their effects. words like "happy" and "sad" and "angry" are minimally useful and aren't that descriptive; personally, i'd rather hear the story of why you feel that way.

with that in mind, i know we don't usually say that we fall in love with our friends, but i want permission to start doing so. intellectually, it's essentially the same process, taking our minds to that place without our consent (we can't change our friends or lovers or even our interests without changing who--or at least how--we are). obviously there are drastically different hormones released in the other case, but that clarification is usually not needed in context.

on that note, i have, several times now, watched myself fall in love, each time to a higher degree of resolution; from such observation, i've gained much insight as to why i do love, or have come to love, certain people. not surprisingly, as that understanding grows, understanding of myself grows as well.

when this period of reflection started several years ago, i was dissatisfied enough with my life that my exploration was largely uninhibited; asking myself seriously probing questions and accepting the often-ugly truth was not only condoned, but welcomed, even encouraged. after all, at trying to understand why i would get involved in such destructive and absurd situations, i had already failed me not once, but twice.

this odd abortion of pride and tendency to crave truth over everything else (including happiness) ultimately left me much more aware and less afraid of myself. i felt like i was in this full-blown learning mode, where everything i did and everyone i met was an experience from which new understanding could be gained. for all my schooling and knowledge, it was the first time i felt any wiser. little did i know that i was barely scratching the surface of self-awareness, but i'll save that for another time.

ultimately, two crucial relationships came to pass that would kick-start my journey from that awkwardly raw awakened state to where and who i am now. the first was a classic example of falling in love with a girl, with just enough of a spin on it to open my eyes in a whole new way. our romantic involvement was cut short for both personal and circumstantial reasons (aka we were fools), but the relationship continued to grow in unforeseen ways until i had all but redefined my notions of love, reality, and even god. we shared the same sort of unabridged wonder for the world, and through simple exchanges of relatively few words with this other person, i had convinced myself that, even though i couldn't put my finger on it, there was indeed something more to this world than is implied by the usual agnostic naturalist beliefs i held at the time (disclaimer: it will become clear in time that i mean nothing magical or otherwise supernatural by this). even more importantly, this wasn't a decision based more than slightly on faith; in fact, to some extent, i had deduced it, reasoned it logically from accepted naturalist premises and this new empirical--albeit subjetive--evidence.

that said, at the time, i could at best only hint at what that "something more" actually is. it took an even closer and more unusual look at an entirely different encounter to finally see that which is hidden in plain sight, literally right in front of and all around us.

i've been seeing things...

it turns out you don't need a built-in network cable/jack like the creatures in avatar to "see" things the way they would. my roommate and i were floored by the inclusion of the concept in the movie, given that we had already stumbled onto the idea and were attempting to develop the ability in some crude manner.

"seeing things" was only one of many aspects of the ideology in the film that floored us; it's discouraging to me that so many people thought the movie too obvious or unoriginal, given the uniqueness of some of the deeper implications of the world of the na'vi. then again, i suspect even james cameron himself didn't really know the full extent of what he had stumbled onto. perhaps i'm still missing something obvious myself, but even if so, i like to think that art, especially really good art, often holds much more truth than even that of which its creator is aware. i've even found this to be true of my own stuff from years ago.

for my roommate--let's call him "jeff"--and i, these run-ins with seeing things have only increased in frequency since. it's not terribly interesting by relative standards, but i'm actually seeing my keyboard right now as i type this; jeff has a whole new connection with his car (standard transmission). sometimes we see these things incidentally, sometimes we go looking for them. turns out seeing is not even such a hard thing to do, with just about any perceivable thing at all, once you know where to look. of course, it seems that first step of knowing "where to look" may be a difficult thing to learn. indeed, i suppose that's why i'm writing this. after all, i basically found it by accident, and even that came after i had unknowingly honed myself into someone capable of such a thing for at least many years. i'm expecting that for most people, it takes, at least, a lot of learning and a little luck (maybe even a quantum of faith?) to focus one's mind's eye on something quite so ironically elusive.

so here i am, trying to become a teacher of a thing i've only just learned myself. perhaps it's foolish to expect that a few months' head start is adequate, but the good news is that in some sense i am, as they say, only the messenger. this thing all but leads itself, and so it will reveal itself, to me and to others, in due time.

time to upload my mind

i'm running out of disk space...it's time to recruit an external drive.