On Love, and Eating Bugs

     Have you ever had the desire to eat a bug? Mimic Timone and Pumbaa by sucking down a squiggly slimy thing like it was so much angel hair pasta? I’m sure the thought has crossed the mind of many a young child, but I’m talking about doing this as an adult. Alright, how then would you feel if you didn’t have to eat the bugs, but you still had them inside of you? Imagine if they wouldn’t burn up in your stomach acid, but rather lived off your insides. At this point they would be a parasite, not a dangerous one, but rather one whose presence for the most part went unnoticed until it migrated into a different part of your gut, and then you could feel it worming its way around. Could you live with the idea of an insect thriving, growing, eating, dispelling its waste, and sleeping peacefully all curled up just beneath the skin of your abdomen? Worse yet, is there any conceivable way you would wish for this?

-The short answer is yes, everyone does-

     Close your eyes for just a minute… Okay, now open them again because you can’t read this with them closed. Duh. Close them when you’re done reading, and try to picture your favorite place, with your favorite song floating in on the breeze from somewhere off in the distance, and imagine it’s the perfect season to be there. Every nerve in your body relaxes. When you get to heaven this is how you hope it will be, because you can’t imagine anything more perfect. Wait, sure you could. It would be far more perfect if you had someone there to share it with. Of course I don’t mean just any-someone but rather a special someone. Like how Ringo Star answered the question, “Could it be anybody?” with “I want somebody to love.” So no matter if you’ve met this Earth-shakingly flawless individual before or not, imagine that at this perfect place at this perfect time is the first time you’ve laid eyes on this perfect individual, and you just know exactly what Shakespeare meant when he was writing all those sappy sonnets. Think about the abundance of overwhelming feelings which are erupting in this unspoiled moment. Think about the flutter of butterflies that burns with such pure desire as they beat their wings and create a hurricane of passion inside of you. Now stop, and really think about it. Sure butterflies are ever so prettier than most bugs, but they are bugs none the less. They are bugs that devour their habitats, bugs that excrete fluids and such that their bodies no longer need, and bugs that can flap their wings here and cause a “natural” disaster over there. Imagine then, how 20 or so of those things would ravage your insides as they all decide to flap their wings at the same instant. And yet, for some unknown reason, this is a feeling that comes on rare occasions to us, and when it does, we cling to it as tight as we can. We may never know why, but we enjoy this feeling, and crave it. Everyone at some point in time wishes for these “bugs” to live in their gut, and sometimes, they are a good thing and they thrive and live on for years, and help us do the same. Other times they leave us ravaged, and they die off shortly after destroying their home, and all we can do is sit, and wait, and wish for a new flutter to spontaneously spring up in our gut and allow us to dive into love again.