Dear Plato, re: The Symposium

(above: I love this picture, its so romantically scandalous)

Before you even experience it for the first time....you want it more than anything.

Before you really know what it is, you convince yourself that you have it, when you most likely don't.

When you or another breaks this thing you don't really have- it's the most painful hurt.

When you stop trying to find it, the real thing creeps in from the most unsuspecting entrance.

When you finally start to denounce it as pure fantasy and dillusion, is when you feel it with the greatest intensity.

Its different and better than anything you spent your life imagining it would be. And it feels so good that it hurts.

There is a tragedy to experiencing or having something in your life that gives you so much joy. At the same time that you have it- you hurt just knowing the painful withdrawl you would experience if you ever stopped having it. In a transient world, its a tragedy to find so much physical beauty and dependence on things around you. Thus, the joy rivals the pain.

People often talk about whether love is selfish or selfless. Actually, it's neither. It involves the self just as much as it involves the self of another. It's two selfs meeting on the same level at the same time with equal connection. It's reciprocity- but it's much deeper than that. Its the reciprocity of an unexplainable understanding and countless unconditional, unspoken agreements.