"For at the precise moment that the residents of the town started to panic, their thoughts were wholly fixed on the ones they longed to meet again. Their egoism of love made them immune to the general distress..." Albert Camus, The Plague.

Before his automobile drove into a tree dashing out his life forever, Camus wrote these lines in the middle of a study of the human experience/catastrophe. That peering insight into the human psyche, that no matter where we are, what we are going through, the thing that can drive us, save us from the pittances of inevitable ruin, is the vestiges of our spirit. Our spirit's capacity to reach out beyond ourselves to those who are "other" to us. The people whom we hold sacred, that no disease, malady or palsy can truly erase. Whether or not that tendency is inherent only in humans seems an unineteresting question, but that fact that it exists seems to be a point of marvel. It seems to me that to Camus and perhaps to people of similar temperament, that love itself, whether it be romantic or platonic really need not matter, can drive the human spirit. That desire to overcome suffering if nothing else to meet the ones we love again at the very least, for one last time, is a profound gift that has been bestowed us.

The Hindus or Buddhists say that this "attachment" is the root all human suffering however, that the sooner we can train our minds to attach less, or to try to root out that desire, that attachment, that therein we will begin to discover the beginnings of happiness. Admittedly, the Hindus and the Buddhists sometimes tend to take the stuffing out of the turkey, metaphorically speaking. They take away all that often inspires us Western folk. How we seek to take all that allows us to feel human and maximize those feelings, emotions, sentiments. Sometimes it's as if the Eastern thinkers have already dismissed that as the langishing on the fat, the very thing which ties us down---petty sentiment for weak-minded fools. And certainly, this can't be so , probably isn;t so. But if you were raised reading Western literature, you're drenched in these ideals, probably laid down by someone like Plutarch or even Shakespeare in his sonnets, that love is a lofty go, love allows us to reach outside ourselves and create connections, while the Buddhists have us questioning whether connections can exist if the self simply does not. And if the self does not exist, then how can connections exist between two identical selves that do not exist... Fiddlesticks. Mu. And sucks to your ass-mar. I refuse to believe that way, even though that sick part of my intellect wants to say, ahh learned much you have if you can this accept. I still side with the Romantics who might say that love of others helps our intellect rise into regions of heavenly thought. Love of others is like that of constant prayer to the divine. And such prayer could only be helpful to the soul... Weak reasoning? Maybe if you are a cold calculating rationalist. And maybe I'm giving up my opinion of rationalists. Let the gloves come off like a prom dress I guess.