The Magic of Meaning

It's late, and I'm tired. It's been a long semester, and an even longer day. Not for any particular reason, just all of them crammed together like an overstuffed carry-on bag. My complaints? I don't really have any. I'm just living my life, you know? Today that looks like spending time with my nieces, fretting over homework, and most recently, picking up a position as a stage manager for a youth theater show. We're putting on The Velveteen Rabbit  A Play in Two Acts by Phil Grecian (originally a book by Margery Williams). It's one of my favorite stories.

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It's pretty much the perfect allegory of how love wins, every time. I gave a copy of this story to my first boyfriend because that was how he made me feel, and how I felt about him. Love makes the experience real. It conquers fear. It tramples death. It nurses the wounds of generations.

I've been reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. He wrote it after surviving the Holocaust. He writes that "the salvation of man is through love and in love."

But that's just one perspective. Another is this one by Neil Gaiman:
“Q: Have you ever been in love?
A: Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

It's just one of those mysterious things, or maybe it is the mysterious thing that everything else revolves around. Well, I don't know much about it, but I'm learning. Learning all the time. I'll leave you with this song.