Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was so brokenhearted, so untrusting, so unbelieving, and so isolated from the world that she began to pray to God, because He was her last hope. She didn't know what she was doing when she was praying, so she simply spoke to God like she wished she could to her own father.

One day, she felt heavy in her heart (which was a fairly common occurrence) and she called out to her Father, "Lord, please never put another man in my life. All they do is hurt me. But, I know You have better plans for me than I have for myself, so if it is Your will, please only put a man in my life if he is the right one -- the one I am supposed to marry. I am sick of all this pain. Please, please listen to this prayer." These words made her feel safe, so she lifted them up to God every day, over and over again, for years.

For quite some time, the girl was completely happy on her own, and her heart became so full of love for the Lord that she could hardly contain her giddiness. If she had the love of Jesus, how could anything worldly compare? Why had she ever wanted worldly love at all, when His love was so amazing? Any time a guy approached her, she would simply tell him, "I don't date. Sorry."

Then one sunny summer Sunday, the Lord brought a man into her life. She was totally caught off guard. What should she do? So she listened to God, and she did as He instructed -- she listened to the man, and talked to him, and opened herself up to him (as best as she knew how, at least, with her broken, walled-up heart). And the more she talked to him, the more she felt that God had definitely brought him into her life for a reason. She knew better than to expect anything from a man, but for some strange reason, this one she could trust. Trust? Was that even possible for her? God was obviously moving in her heart!

She was confused, and scared, and she prayed, "Lord, I don't know if this is going anywhere, but if it does, thank You! And if it doesn't, could You make sure I get a really, really worthwhile lesson out of it?" But in truth, she had a good feeling about the man, whom only by an ethereal mystery she trusted. She wanted to cover all her bases, though.

So when the man left her, as she feared (but also anticipated), she was more confused and brokenhearted than she had ever been before. She pleaded with the Lord, "Dear Father God, please never put another man in my life. Ever. Never, never ever. Under any circumstances. I love You, and that's it."

After some time, the girl spoke these words to her Heavenly Father: "Dear God, thank You for giving me this experience -- the chance to grow in myself, and the chance to grow closer to You. You are everything to me." And she began to feel better, because through all her pain, she had always known that the man was just trying to do what was right in God's eyes, and she certainly couldn't blame him for that. Though his actions hurt her greatly, and made her cry, Jesus Christ was there to wipe her tears away.

It's been a while...

In the movie Practical Magic, if you've ever seen it, Nicole Kidman's character describes love to her little neice like this:

Gillian Owens: You ever put your arms out and spin really, really fast?
Antonia Owens: She does it all the time.
Gillian Owens: She does? Well, that's what love is like. It makes your heart race. It turns the world upside down. But if you're not careful, if you don't keep your eyes on something still, you can lose your balance. You can't see what's happening to the people around you. You can't see that you're about to fall.

I think it's a pretty apt description. Now, I'm not saying I'm in love, I'm talking about love. I think of it as driving down rural roads with all the windows down, screaming at the top of your lungs, "I'm in love!!! I love _____!!!"

You can't concentrate. You hold your phone next to you all the time, waiting for the next time he calls, because he said he would, and you trust him 100% to keep his word. Anything you try doing: reading, movies, burning one, listening to music, writing in your journal... none of it lasts for more than five minutes, because you have a one-track mind.

In a way, it's magical. In a way, it sucks :)

But it's worth it.

The Great Tragedy of Armageddon

Let's see... it was the year 1999 CE when I believed I had discovered the fundamental truth of the human existence: Tragedy is at the core of everything, and to search for anything else (while it might make you feel better temporarily) is futile.

Why the hell did I think this? I watched Shakespeare in Love.

Now, the surprising thing is that I wasn't wrong. (No, I'm not experiencing a major depressive episode, I just happen to be an educated scientist.)

See, eventually the universe is going to burn out. New stars are not being created at the rate that old stars are dying. That means that eventually, we will run out of stars to light and heat our earth. What happens then? A whole bunch of crazy sh*t. Like the (dead) stars in the galaxies flying apart. Like the universe approaching absolute zero, where everything happens in slow motion because it's so damned cold. Then, at some point, only black holes exist, but when black holes run out of fuel, they explode. What comes out of them? A huge mess of particles. Particles that we can't even imagine. "Chaos" reigns, which I suppose if you take the Greek view, means that women are in charge. :)

And then quantum mechanics takes over, and with an eternity of probabilities to roll through, who knows what arrangements of things might appear?

So, my view is that the fate of the universe, which is basically the Second Law of Thermodynamics, isn't all that different from an Oscar-winning chick flick. Tragedy is the end result of everything after all.

The Universe : Cosmic Apocalypse. The Universe as we know it is condemned to death. Space, matter and even time will one day cease to exist and there's nothing we can do about it. Harsh realities are revealed about the future of our Universe; it may collapse and burn or it might be gripped by a galactic ice age. Either of these scenarios might be a long way off. However, our Universe could suddenly be destroyed by a "random quantum fluctuation", a bubble of destruction that can obliterate the entire cosmos in the blink of an eye. No matter how it ends, life in our Universe is doomed.