Weblog

So, I do a lot of writing in college — a lot. Some of it's required class junk that I could care less about. However, it's the other stuff that I don't have to write that I love to write: the stuff that you read here or the stuff that gets published in the newspaper.

Woven throughout all (well, at least most) of my writing is a common theme: love… well, that and the fact that I'm a schmuck. Anyway, love — I can't really escape writing about it. As I was writing my last feature, I kept asking myself why any of what I was writing about mattered. The answer is love.

I cannot imagine living in a world where love wasn't the central concept. I mean, really, if I'm not supposed to love, what point is there to even get out of bed in the morning? If love wasn't the guiding principle of my life, I wouldn't be doing most of the things that I'm doing. Tolstoy once said, “All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”

Okay, I talked about love. Now, I'm going to talk about how I'm a schmuck. Why is it that I can love fatherless orphans in Africa, but I can't even love my neighbours.¹ Why is that?

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1. Not in the Jesus-said-to-love-your-neighbour neighbour, but actual neighbour.