The light only stays on for as long as you move.

Saw a man in Manitou tonight, riding his bike along a dark alleyway. There was a halogen light attached to the front, and it shone, illuminated, each time a pedal was pressed down. Because he was riding on a hill, the light was blinking on and off as he paused at the apex of each stride, hovering for a moment, just an instant, before pressing down again, bathing the pavement in blue glow. I paused in my step, ginger beer raised to my lips, and realized: the light only stayed on for as long as he moved.

Isn't that true in every area of human existence? Don't we only understand things as long as we attempt to understand them? Don't we only see when our eyes are wide? Don't we only love when our hearts are open? Don't we only give when we are filled up?

Spoke with a friend on my driveway tonight. He was very sad. He was sure that all there was to life was tolerance - "You find somebody who wants to spend their life with you, and you put up with them, because they put up with you."

He asked me what the most important thing in life is. "Is it how you impact others?"

I told him, "Love."

He said, "Or at least tolerance."

I shook my head. "That's jaded and cynical. It's love. Love is the only thing we never run out of, no matter how much we use."

We spoke of philosophy, of universal balance. He said, "There will always be a foil. Yin and yang. Evil needs good to exist, and good needs evil."

I said, "Good can exist independently of evil, and that's what makes it stronger."

He said, "But evil can exist independently of good, too."

I said, "Evil independent of good is entropy, and nothing survives entropy. Evil needs good; good can exist without evil."

He said, "But there has always been a balance, since the very beginning of time."

I said, "There is no such thing as balance. One scale is always heavier than the other. It's like human life: you're never standing still. You're always moving forward, or moving back."

We spoke later of chance. I said, "I thought you didn't believe in chance."

He said, "Well, when you don't believe in God, you have to believe in something. Everything's either predestined or it's not. So, chance."

I said, "To the Greeks, chance was a god. Her name was Tyche."

We spoke, too, of the importance of conversations that occur between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. I said they were the best of conversations, the most relevant.

He agreed. I said, "It's when night falls, when everything is shrouded and small, that people can hear themselves think."

He said, "But not during the day, when there is so much to do, when you're always moving."

My neighborhood was quiet, still. Dead. The mechanized silence weighed on me. There was nothing human about it, its detachment, its dispassion. There was no love, and it was very cold. Our world is dying, and we are the ones killing it.

My friend asked me why I bothered. Why I'd looked him up, checked up on him after so long. I said, "Because I love you. Friends take care of one another. It's what we were made for."

Ray Bradbury wrote a book about our world. It's a very short book - when there is nothing human left, there is very little to be said.

"'Are you happy?'...
Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall. The girl's face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact. She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it has to tell of the night passing swiftly on to further darkness, but moving also toward a new sun. ...He glanced back at the wall. Hoe like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for many people did you know that refracted your own light back to you? People were more often - he searched for a simile, found one in his work - torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?
What incredible power of identification the girl had; she was like the eager watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eyelid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger, the moment before it began. How long had they talked together? Three minutes? Five? Yet how large that time seemed now. How immense a figure she was on the stage before him; what a shadow she threw on the wall with her slender body! He felt that if his eye itched, she might blink. And if the muscles of his jaws stretched imperceptibly, she would yawn long before he would.
Why, he thought, now that I think of it, she almost seemed to be waiting for me there, in the street, so damned late at night...
...'Sometimes...I like to put my head back, like this, and let the rain fall in my mouth. It tastes just like wine. Have you ever tried it?'...
And she rain off and left him standing in the rain. Only after a long time did he move.
And then, very slowly, as he walked, he tilted his head back in the rain, for just a few moments, and opened his mouth..."

I told my friend, "The human heart's a very tenacious thing."

People mold us, shape us, reflect us, define us. No human is independent of his world, of the people who surround him. Sometimes all it takes is someone different, someone found, to show us who we really are, to show us who we've forgotten in ourselves along the way. Someone to think we're worthwhile.

People go to great lengths to remain themselves. Sometimes they just need to be reminded. Sometimes they just need to be loved.

A friend jokingly called me a lost cause today. I replied with a grin, "Just because I don't know where the hell I am most of the time doesn't mean I'm lost."

Think hard. Look closely. Love bravely and too well.

Are you happy?

-Avalon