Equal Parts Harmless and Sad

“I once caused your cells to shimmer,
and you once caused my cells to shimmer
and now we go all the night
without love.”

-All the Night Without Love by Elvis Perkins

Human beings have been given an immeasurably valuable gift by evolution: extraordinarily large brains. This single physical characteristic represents perhaps the greatest divide between we homosapiens and the rest of the life on this planet. The enormous size of our craniums affect virtually every aspect of our existence, and with every extraordinary gift given in the natural sphere, it comes with extraordinary costs.

Humans, unlike the majority of the creatures on this planet, are extremely fragile, susceptible to illness and injury, and oddly proportioned in virtually every way. Our astronomical craniums are the reason the young of our species are born at such an early developmental stage, usually born only one at a time, and almost always with some difficulty. Have you ever watched a calf or a colt being born? They plop out, mom gives them a lick, and they’re on their own four feet in about twenty minutes, if somewhat wobbly.

Humans, on the other hand, require constant care and protection for the first three to four years of their lives. Why this grand disconnect? Our inordinately large heads, designed to hold our inordinately large brains, have to be pushed though our mother’s ordinarily narrow hips before they get so big they won’t fit at all. This tends to happen around the ninth month. Unfortunately, the human brain does not entirely develop until age four to six.

You women out there try to imagine passing a six-year-old through your vagina and thank the forces of natural selection.

The payoff is obvious: I think therefore I am. We don’t just see the rain and run for cover, we see the signs, we learn why it rains, learn it’s purpose, learn to predict it, and we’re not that far from being able to control it. Old Greek tales of Gods and Monsters would tell of the early days of Man during which the Gods would hunt humans like stock. Certainly, they didn’t have sharp tusks like boars, or strong jaws like lions or swift feet like deer, but their brains made them the most exciting game of all. Instead of simply running from the arrows, they would question from whence they came, and soon enough, would be wielding similar weapons of their own design.

Comparatively, we’re a soft, squishy pink, virtually hairless species that just lucked out to have enough abstract computing power to figure out that when you bang rocks together, you sometimes get a spark. We’ve transformed this strange ability into a myriad of skills that have brought our species, MAN, to the top of the heap. With everything, the golden rule of nature decries, there is a price.

Anxiety, depression, jealousy, hatred, envy, loathing, boredom, these are the prices we pay for our brains. The truly double-edged sword of consciousness and “feelings” is what ultimately sets us apart from the other beasts that call this rock home. Elephants don’t feel inadequate, lizards don’t feel anxious, monkeys don’t feel anguish, animals don’t feel empathy.

Animals don’t love.

Ah, love, the ultimately beautiful and horrible state of the human mind, the emotion to end all emotions, total, inescapable, unavoidable, unconditional and completely mind-bogglingly annoying love. What is love? This is a question that has plagued poets and scientists alike since men first emerged from their caves and stood upright, blinking at the sun.

Is it chemical? It is mental? Is it spiritual?

This very thing that separates us as a species from the beasts, is the very thing that keeps us deeply separate from each other: You can never know what goes on in another person’s head, the same way they will never know what goes on in yours, no matter how many hours they waste at a keyboard blogging to no on in particular, for no particular reason. As a species, we are islands of loneliness in tumultuous seas of subjectivity. As a gregarious species at heart, we may never be truly alone, but as thinking minds, we will never be anything but.

Is love simply what you want it to be? Can the subjective definition of love vary so greatly person to person? If love can be anything, then it can be nothing, and the concept loses all meaning. The ethereal nature of something as simultaneously ubiquitous and rare as love is both simultaneously gratifying and infuriating.

As a married man, in a happy and functional union, I have the good fortune to experience of love on a daily basis, often many times a day (depending on how much vitamin E I can get my hands on). Words alone cannot describe the feeling of looking at another human being knowing the deep value of that love when she pledged it to you in front of both your families, all your friends and a creepy statue of a frowning and bleeding Jesus.

Equally as valuable is when you offered the same to her, and she accepted it without gagging.

Something even the happiest man is rarely reminded of, however, is what it feels like to fall in love. The awkward first steps taken just before you start running towards that cliff edge, hoping desperately that the bungee cord holds and you don’t end up with your overly large brain smeared on the rocks below. As functional as our brains are as storage facilities of memories and knowledge, sometimes, especially after many years, something as important as how you got someplace as hard to find as love, can be a bit fuzzy around the edges. The good news it that the mechanisms of memory work quite well when someone takes the time to remind you.

Required reading for every man is the illustrated novel by Craig Thompson called Blankets. To those that have yet to locate and conquer love, this book will prove beyond the shadow of doubt that the venture is worth the blood, sweat and tears. If you’ve had the good fortune to find yourself in the enviable position to claim love as your own, but got your eviction papers late in the game, this book will be the scrapbook you wish you had, but never had the gumption to make for fear your friends would find it.


Finally, for those of us that enjoy the benefits (and withstand the tribulations) of love every day, this book is a near-perfect journal of youthful obsession and of love that is only felt by the fortunate few.

People often recommend books with phrases like “it changed my life” or “my perspective” or “my opinion” on something as meaningless as opening chess moves or weight loss programs or whether or not Jesus had a wife. This book will do precisely the opposite: It will remind you of how you felt when you first loved, and if you’re lucky enough to still have that person in your life, it will strengthen that love and reassure you of what you already knew: It’s worth it, it really is.

So what is love? The quick answer is (a phrase that has never, and will likely never again appear in this forum) I don’t know. You may as well ask “what is pain” or “what is expression?” For certain, love is not simply what you believe it to be, because beliefs are always changing and fluxing as we grow and know the world a little more, which happens every day. Love is what you know it to be, you just may not have figured out how much you know about it just yet.

I had the good fortune to be the best man at my best friend’s wedding and I was asked to give a speech at the rehearsal dinner. I tried for days to think of something both meaningful and witty to say (I know, shocking that I couldn’t come up with anything, says every reader if this fine forum) but came up blank. The fetching Mrs. Sonnier offered to help, but I assured her I had it all under control. As usual, I was only fooling myself.

For all the people that were gathered that night, I remembered for them a conversation he and I were had some years earlier while we were deciding where to hang our movie posters in our (ill-gotten) apartment. He asked me when it was that you know you’re in love, when does it become clear. I can only imagine that he felt I might have some experience in the matter because the future fetching Mrs. Sonnier and I had been hand-in-hand for several years at that point, as if I had any say in the matter.

Having virtually nothing of any meaning to tell him, I just told him that once you have to ask, you probably already know the answer. This, as it may shock Luke to know, was a huge cop-out. I really didn’t have anything to say, but they seemed to receive it well, nonetheless.

I hope these recently passed holidays found you all well and just rolling in love and good tidings from all directions, requited or otherwise. I also hope you all will accept my apologies for my recent “under-the-radar” status, which hopefully can soon be rectified.

And finally, thanks for reading. I love you all. Like a father. Or perhaps an alcoholic uncle. Something non-committal, and sort of equal parts harmless and sad like that.