Letters to friends & Love

It is 2:13 in the morning, I’m sick, and I can’t sleep. I’m also listening to a combination of Metric, M.I.A., Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, The Four Tops and The Jackson Five. I’m not gonna lie ... now that I have this blog it is a little exciting. I can say stuff ... and people might read it ... that’s super cool. Even if they think I’m a raving lunatic, it doesn’t matter ... because they are reading it and hopefully it will start conversations and I can get feedback. Anywho, with my first post after my introductory post, there are two things that I want to address. The first being something that I’ve kind of said yes to doing, the second is a topic that has been increasingly on my mind as of recent. So let’s get to it.

Letters to friends

So this whole saying yes thing is about doing stuff that I might not usually do or that I might think is a good idea but never follow through on. One idea that I have for a long time was to send letters out to my friends. The purpose of the letters is to say thank you. Thank you for being there and being a friend. I know ... it is super corny. I don’t really care though. I think it is important and it needs to be said. Now this is an idea that I have had for several years but I always kept putting it off. However, several things have happened in the last few months, which make me think that it would be a good idea to do this sooner rather than later. For one, I had an old friend who died. It was a little unsettling when it happened. I hadn’t really talked to him for some time, and we hadn’t been that close since elementary school. It was still really unsettling. He was a great guy ... one of the best men I’ve ever known. If I could even come remotely close to being a guy like him, then I would be pretty happy. It was an accidental death, which made it completely unexpected. After it happened, all I could think about was all he had left to do and say to people. It got me thinking about all the stuff we never say to the truly important people in our lives, and how a lot of times it’s just too late.

Another reason for the letters are because I just moved from Vancouver to Ottawa in January and I still think about all my friends back out west, and how they impacted my life over the last 5 and a half years out there. I do miss them and I think a letter would be a good idea. Now, I’m not just going to be sending letters to people in Vancouver but, to a bunch of people. The goal is really to let people know that I appreciate them and how they may have affected my life, and to say thank you. I’m not sure how long it will take or when I will start. I do still have quite a lot to do with school and such, but I’ll try and start getting letters out soon.

Love

I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about this so much recently, but my mind has been in overdrive these last few months, thinking about anything and everything. For some reason, Love, has been at the top of the list. I’ve been thinking about the whole concept of it. I’ve also really started to think about how it is just a series of chemical reactions that go on in the brain and body. And because I am a biology nerd, I did read some papers on the chemicals behind it, as well as the fact that it is associated with similar chemicals and regions of the brain implicated in OCD (pretty interesting). I also tried thinking about it from an evolutionary perspective, and how the chemicals may have evolved to increase pair bonding and other things like that. I got a little obsessed with it for a while, and how if it is just chemicals, then it is somehow devalued. Then I talked to a wise biology graduate student who reminded me “So what if it’s only chemicals and a mechanism. Fuck the mechanism. It’s still real. It still requires another person and it’s still a link.” So true.

Another time, someone asked me if I had ever been in love ... and I answered that I wasn’t entirely sure ... I mean how can anyone really know? I’ve heard so many different theories on love from different people. How there are different types, and different levels, and how one person has only experienced level 4 love, and how to get to level 9 they have to slay the dragon guarding the secret door and all sorts of random gibberish like that. This really didn’t help me to answer the question. The often quoted line is “When you’re in love, you’ll know.” That doesn’t help at all. But I’ve come up with a question that can help determine it. Here it is: Let’s say there is a man/woman that you think you might be in love with. If someone came up to you and offered you a billion dollars (or a trillion or any amount of money or stuff) provided that you did not have a relationship with that person or do anything with that person, what would you do? Now here is how you know. If you choose the money, you’re not in love. Why? Because that’s the rational choice, and love really isn’t that rational. Think about it. If you got a billion dollars, you could quit your job and spend your time in the gym getting in shape, and out in bars/clubs/social activities where you would be able to meet lots of different people and presumably find someone else. If you really love the person though, you’ll choose the person over the money because you’ll recognize the obvious fact that they’re always making more money but that person is one of a kind, and therefore, priceless (pretty good huh!).

One last thing on love. We all experience it differently. Some people have the ability to fall in love easily, while others take a while. What I want to stress though, is that there is no time frame and every case is different. So don’t listen to people when they tell you that it is too early or late to fall in love ... because that is just plain wrong. And if you like someone, and you think they might like you, grow a pair and tell them ... worst case scenario, you get rejected, and you join the club comprised of everybody. Cool. Alrighty, well it is now 3:08 and my music has stopped, so I think it good to call it a night here. I’ve said all I need to say for now.

p.s. Also, despite the term being on urban dictionary since 2005, I independently came up with it this year and so I am staking a claim to it. The word is loke, and it refers to when you like someone but don’t yet love them. I’m pretty proud of it. I’m kind of a big deal.