Love does not make the world go ‘round. On the contrary, it is one of those few concepts in life that will either stop your world cold or make it speed past you at a hundred and five miles per hour. What is responsible for making the world turn would be knowledge. It is perhaps the sole reason of our existence and single-handedly responsible for nearly all establishments, jobs, and positions on this planet. When you apply for a job you certainly don’t get hired on the basis of where your current romantic relationship is headed- don’t even bother applying if you’re riding solo- or what your income is at the moment. The intense rivalry among high-school seniors for the most prestigious college is driven not only by the natural competition between humans to outshine each other but predominantly by the extreme emphasis placed on which university provides the best administrators for higher and higher levels of knowledge. What degree(s) you’ve earned, what university you graduated from, your ranking and GPA- all indicators of the very same knowledge responsible for running this world as efficiently as it does.

This is all basic fact, despite its fanatic dismissal either by hopeless romantics or arrogant millionaires. In no way does this bother me in the slightest since I’m all for letting those who wish to live in naïveté and oblivion do just that. However, seeing as this is all part of my disclosure, I will admit that the lack of knowledge thereof is actually what sets me off more frequently than anything else. In all honesty, how much does the regular thirty-something year old really KNOW? Yes, they can recite all fifty-one U.S. states, speak several languages, and divulge into the numerous causes of the Second World War, but the amount of information they do not know is insurmountable. You know your daughter- until you find out she’s secretly been cutting herself late at night. You know your mother- until you discover she eloped with some guy while her future husband and she were on a break. And my personal favorite which has steadily been hogging media headlines as of late- you know your loving, hard-working, and kind-hearted husband of sixteen years until, of course, you come home from an early day at work to find him having sex with your best friend- on the very same Tempur-Pedic mattress that just happens to be the first big purchase the two of you made as newlyweds. It’s these sneaky little things about knowledge that truly fascinate me at times due to how positively, one hundred and ten percent sure we are of what we “know”.

You know you’ve never ever felt the way you do until you met him. You know you two belong together and he loves you more than any other girl he’s ever dated. You know you’ve both made mistakes and overcome them so naturally you’ll be together forever. You know one day you’ll get married, have two kids, and grow old together in a vacation home in the Bahamas. You know… until you don’t. And, by God, the feeling you get when you discover what you knew was not, in essence, fact as much as it was a hazy illusion you embedded into your heart and soul is one of the utterly worst feelings one can experience. Because when you realize how badly you’ve been cheated- not by a person you can confront and resolve the issue with- but by a concept that seems so elusive you don’t even know how much of it YOU really understand, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. You’re literally forced to accept the crime committed against you- no one to accuse, no one to grill on the stand, and certainly no one to answer for how you feel.
Now you know that you are not, and never have been, the only woman he thinks about. A future with you? Sure, but not before he’s consistently been hitting up the party scene for a few years and slept with an impressive array of women which he will inevitably use to validate and legitimize his manhood. For knowledge- even that of a volume of various women’s capabilities in bed- is power. Oh, and should you by some crazy delusion your mind adopts, decide to point out the complete ludicrousness of his actions, you should prepare for the speech of a lifetime; for by the end of his monologue you will have heard every male-justified piece of crap ranging from the burdened responsibility every man has to experience as many women as possible to the God-given duty they carry to sleep with a woman and never call her back so when she does find a man who treats her right, she feels blessed and forever in debt to her new hubby (who has, of course, hurt other females the exact same textbook way that she, herself, has been hurt).

I don’t believe knowledge is the measure of a person, if only because eighty-five percent of that so-called knowledge is completely relative. So given that- given this piece of information- what do you do? Do you quit school and backpack through the world, completely giving up on attaining the conventional idea of knowledge? Do you try and prove me wrong by graduating at the very top of your class from the highest rated university that exists? I certainly don’t know the answer to that question and quite frankly neither do you. Do what you please, be with whoever fulfills you, surround yourself with people who mirror the love you give them- but know, understand, and remember, every minute of every day, that perspective, position, potential, and above all knowledge are all subject to change.