I Fell in Love

Beginnings are over-rated; they're so much more often the start of good than the start of bad. We often credit them with being the first step on the roads to success, to grand schemes or projects, and to anything that will eventually Be. Endings, however, though they can signal the conclusion of something horrible (say, for instance, war), are rarely celebrated with as much vigor as what begins from that same ending (peace). Sex generally feels good, and birth, the occasional end result of that sex, always hurts. After a birth, when the woman is finished hurting and sweating and screaming at her husband: "You did this to me!" the couple celebrates, not the end of a pregnancy, but the "defining moment:" the beginning of their child's life.

We define things by their boundaries, and those boundaries help us to find the broader meaning and purpose in those things. A hole is not a hole because of the air it contains, which, if you raise it out of the ground would be nothing. Rather, a hole is a hole because of the walls of dirt that define the hole. In the same way, we define ourselves and each other ...

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...actually happened; I just looked closely one day and found myself falling or already fallen. Perhaps it was a sunny Sunday morning and I just watched her as she sang in the choir. Maybe I realized, just then, as the soft glow of morning sunlight stremed through the stained-glass window and ignited her face: 'Yes, I love this girl.' But when did it actually happen? When did we cross the line between whatever we had before to the absolutely undefinable concept of "love?" Who knows? All I know is this: In the beginning I was happy; in the end I was sad.