Two days, two weeks, two months, two years, two decades of the wonderful bond between two humans doesn't really amount to a hill of beans. What matters is the moment. A stranger may give his life for another in that moment or a mother may kill her child.
Parameters. An understanding of hard rock walls that run back, from sunlit fields through twisted tree trunks and limbs of century old second growth forest; that dive back into the moist earth and bang along the steel blades of horse drawn plows; that tumble over and over again beneath the grinding weight of ice packs a mile thick. Back to the towering out-crops of ocean floors sent skyward by colliding continents where once our most primitive ancestors twisted bloody joints and spat into sizzling fires. Hard rock walls; no different from the attitudes, opinions and beliefs that have stratified within our personalities like colorful stacks of plates shelved in anticipation of tomorrow's company.
So what changes? As a species do we grow a little taller, do we stand a little straighter? Have we refined our intellect or sharpened our moral courage? For every example of proof positive two can be conjured in opposition. If not in society, is there at least uniformity of mission within the individual? Is history not overburdened with examples of how circumstances can turn the civilized savage, the peaceful violent?
How's this for the definition of life: "A state of wanting." And Amercian life: "A state of wanting more."
And Valentine's Day: "Suspended chagrin for all of the above."
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