Everything is relationships.

From the bond between people to the bond between atoms to the stickiness of gecko toes (which are actually not chemically adhesive, but use van der Waals Force, a weak molecular attraction that operates at very small distances).

It is not the things themselves that we observe, but how they interact. There is nothing in itself that we understand outside of its relationship to something else.

I wrote about this in 2001 to a friend, Tom Vander Molen. He asked permission to use it in his annual Christmas tidings that year, "Ye Olde Malta Street Yule Log," and I said of course.

I wrote, and he quoted::

" ... everything is relationships, from the familiar human and divine ones to mathematical formulas and physical laws, to chemistry and biology. The world is all about bits and pieces interacting with other bits and pieces."

Tom wrote this at the bottom of the printed Yule Log he mailed to me:

I have, alas, lost touch with Tom.

I am soon to say good-bye to some dear people, some of whom I may not see again.

I am conflicted, because this change is allowing me to do more of what I love most in the world - write - and less of what I detest - not write.

Yet what am I mourning? Not the loss of people, but the loss of interacting with them and all the things that interact within them that make them who they are to me.

(If that's confusing, read it again, a few times; it's nearly sublime.)

You may pooh-pooh or tsk-tsk; so it goes with things that can't be seen.

Ask yourself how much meaning an empty home has, a book printed in a language you can't read, or a tasteless meal. It's how you relate to the attributes of a thing that gives it meaning.

Unrelated

Current reading (listening):

I recommend you DON'T read:

Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. Why? Sophomoric and patronizing. 90% of the book is devoted to the evolutionary reasons why men are designed to impregnate as many women as possible as often as possible (accompanied by as much 7th grade jocularity as possible), but closes with the emotional cost of the terrible things men do because of this design. The book has a feminist, areligious perspective, which I don't mind, but for crying out loud, don't spend an entire book explaining why men evolved this way then say "You're broken and we can't fix you."

I learned from the authors I'm designed to cheat and hurt others my entire life, and that I should be ashamed of myself for it. The authors would have made good school marms with fat heavy rulers that they cracked across the knuckles of squirming children.

Started: 2001