Just to Love and Be Loved in Return

Sorry to say, I dropped off the face of the planet, as far as this is concerned, for nearly two months. The reason is simple: I've been out of town, on vacation in the Western United States and at a research meeting in Japan. However, I thought that I'd use this as a springboard for this post.

You see, the primary purpose of my vacation was to see my best friends and family. I went to places that never see tourists (my first stop was Casper, Wyoming), but these stops were far more valuable to me than my day in Venice, Italy. Why? Well, take Casper, for example. I stayed a total of three days (two on the way west, one on the way back) with my friend Jessica and her family. She's probably my best friend: I know that she cares about me, I feel good around her, we get along well, and so forth.

During my days in Casper, it didn't take long to notice how much better I felt than I had in Chicago. Now, don't get me wrong, Chicago is a cool city: just a couple of weeks before I had been absolutely blown away by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the food in the city is amazing, the architecture is awesome, and all the other things that you think of that favor a big city. But I found, quite simply, that I arrived in Wyoming and I felt loved, as I hadn't felt in Chicago.

Now, I'm not talking about romance here. Jessica is a beautiful woman (and I'll even admit that I like her), but that's simply not what I'm talking about. When I say that I love, I mean that the happiness and well-being of another person is important to me, at least as important as my own; when I feel that I am loved, I mean that there is a person who really cares about me.

So, though you might call it a cliche as it's been said so often, love is important, even essential. It makes life better, it's even on that list of things that make life worth living. It might sound cliche, but my experience suggests that days with friends are better than those in Rome, and I don't know what I would do without friends like Jessica.

Title: "Nature Boy" by Eden Ahbez