49. I asked for love...

I asked for love and I thought I was going to get a girlfriend but instead, God gave me a band.

I know nothing can really prepare me for pursuing a significant other but in the meantime, God has given me a band as a kind of trial run. Especially on the West Coast Tour, hanging with the band put me through trials that seemed similar to what I've heard my friends who are in relationships go through.

For example? Well, I'd rather not go into specifics (mostly because I can't remember) but the big thing was learning how to communicate. I was watching some professor on some public access channel (yeah, I was bored) and he was talking about how thoght is parallel whereas speech is serial - in other words, the mind can work on multiple ideas at the same time but we can only talk about one idea at a time (actually, the professor was talking about stuff that was WAY over my head, but I kind of got the edges of it and this is one thing I took from it). This makes communication difficult because the mind can be thinking about three or four things, all of which pertain to the same issue, but we can only speak of one thing at a time.

He also talked about how amazing it is that we can communicate at all. I mean, if you think about it, when you're talking to someone, what you're really doing is taking a idea/image/narrative (a thought, for lack of a better term) that exists only in your mind and using these clumsy things called words to build that same thought in someone else's mind. We take it for granted because we do it everday but communication is a truly remarkable process.

As with anything this complicated, it can be pretty easy to screw up. Add emotion to the mix and you've got a volatile combination. Which brings us back, finally, to me and the band. Learning how to understand what another person is saying while simultaneously trying to get them to understand what you're saying can feel like punching yourself in the face.

Anyway, being in this band has taught me a lot about how to get along with people who are very different from myself. It's not easy, and sometimes it's no fun, but at the end of the day it's more than worth the struggle. And now I find myself in love with these people in the band. I care about them. When they hurt, I hurt and want to heal. I'll go to any lengths (within my resources) to help. When they struggle, I cheer them along. And even though I'm investing in another, I grow at the same time.

...now if only there was a way to make out every once in a while...