The need to believe?

[mordant]

Myself, I find that void filled with simple love. In hard times, I turn to my family, my woman, my friends, and don't worry even what I myself think. And even love doesn't always make things easier -- it only makes them easier to deal with.

My Certain Someone and I were talking just earlier about the limits of logic. I'm of the mind that emotion has just as rightful a place in the human experience as logic and reason, and I make no apologies, even to myself, when on this or that occasion I cotton to emotion rather than reason. And I love her because she accepts both sides of me -- and, if I may so speak, shares them herself.

In my life I strive for balance, and that includes a balance between emotion and reason. Sometimes logic and reason are the right tools for the job, and sometimes love and empathy are. I'm old enough that I've come to trust my instincts about it, and while they do sometimes steer me wrong, those occasions are fewer and fewer.

Trust yourself, and let the scales balance naturally for you, D.

Let the truth of love be lighted
Let the love of truth shine clear
Sensibility
Armed with sense and liberty
With the heart and mind united in a single perfect sphere

Well said. It's a balance.

My wife has a wonderful ability to laugh at absurdity. She knocks herself out sometimes, just belly-laughing about how life just strikes her in some crazy way. My default response to such things is to Not Be Amused. At. All. But the problem is that these things are often not even remotely actionable. You can't do anything about them. Laughter is one path -- and a very good one -- to acceptance of what you can't change. So I traded in my I SEE DUMB PEOPLE tee shirt with its implied supercilious disdain for, and frustration with, the Unenlightened ... and have learned to quit avoiding the realization that I suck just as much, in my own special way, as others do. And lo and behold, thanks to my lovely wife, I've learned to laugh at human foibles, and by extension my own foibles. Not as readily or fully as her (yet) but I'm working on it. It provides me with a useful response to things I could only sputter and fume about before. Is it logical? No. But it's mature. And one does grow SO tired of being perpetually frustrated.