I may not be able to read or interpret social cues, but I am perfectly willing to accept responsibility for my own actions. I don't excuse myself just because there's a legitimate reason that I think this way. I know that if I want to communicate with someone who is foreign to me I have to learn enough of their language to make it happen. I can't take the "American tourist" approach to life and social connections and expect everyone else to speak my language, and when they don't I just talk louder and louder until they "abandon" me. I can't expect others to meet me halfway. I am the foreigner. I am the one who does not belong.
Love is a foreign language with infinite dialects. We are deluded if we think we are alone in not being able to comprehend its many intricacies. However, saying that we are unable to love is tantamount to acknowledging our unwillingness to learn. We may be unable to feel or express the types of emotions that are typically considered part and parcel of it, but we are as capable as any "normal" person of actions that demonstrate the decision to love. We have to approach it as outsiders if we desire that connection at all.
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"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"
- George Carlin
31 May 2008, 10:53 pm
