Changes

So this is the end of an era. We are merging with another company and this is probably the end of our situation as we know it.

Probably people will leave, maybe locations will change and so many other things but what worries me the most is that we will loose our everyday reality as we know it. We had a way of doing things, of communicating, of.....Oh I dunno its hard to explain but I know I'm going to miss it terribly.

Anyway that is all a process that will take some time.

On the other hand recent events have forced me to think on the nature of intimacy and closeness. Also on the maturity that is required to be able to coexist with a person, not just be obsessed or transfixed by passion for sometime and then be unable to move to the next level.

So is it in fact possible to fall in love and stay in love for ever?

Probably not in the strict sense of this sentence. You fall in and out of love many times cause that is the nature of the human brain, we need variety, we are ingenious beings and require change.

Why do we fall in love when it is so painful and we risk so much of our soul in the process? Because when it happens you hear Puccini (just put the name of your favorite artist there - for me it is Nessun Dorma from Turandot - Puccini's final and most exquisite masterpiece) in your brain all day. Because everything is suddenly lifted to the next level and you feel as if your strength is endless. Because it just feels f*cking great.

And also for those who mature with age this also gets worse as the years go by because as their humanity evolves so does the level of feeling and understanding. So falling in love gets more difficult and also a lot more severe.

Falling in love as you grow older , as you mature is something more earth shattering than the agony of your first love because you now carry all this burden.

As a friend put it, you have a buffer that is at first empty. As it fills up it gets a lot more difficult to flush anything out.

Can the agony of being in love, of passion , be followed by years of equal intensity? Probably not but there you have all the intimacy that has been formed in the process. I always thought that if 2 people that were determined to never stop evolving found each other than they would never stop being in love because there would always be something new to find out....together....

If the nature of a soulmate is something that is achievable then I guess that is what it should be like.

This was for me Carl Sagan And Annie Druyan.

When Carl Sagan died it was for me devastating. Reading the epilogue written by Annie the following passage brought me to tears :

"Contrary to the fantasies of the fundamentalists, there was no deathbed conversion, no last minute refuge taken in a comforting vision of a heaven or an afterlife. For Carl, what mattered most was what was true, not merely what would make us feel better. Even at this moment when anyone would be forgiven for turning away from the reality of our situation, Carl was unflinching. As we looked deeply into each other's eyes, it was with a shared conviction that our wondrous life together was ending forever."

In his chapter "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" from The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark (Sagan's last book while he was alive, and the one most critical of religion), Carl wrote:

"If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy."

Sentiments like these are infinitely more moving, more courageous, more meaningful than any hymn or sermon that I have ever heard.

In such a short life we have here it is important, vital, critical and so many more words that do not come to mind to grasp the chances, to achieve this kind of intimacy with a soulmate.

As you grow older it gets so much more difficult for those of us with intriguing minds and evolving humanity.

And sometimes it get devastating.

And I still miss Carl Sagan....damn it!