... and the fourth marriage proposal ...

So, I just got my fourth marriage proposal on ffn.

But that's okay, because she was just kidding. Or she didn't know what she was saying. Or kids these days (or Americans these days) don't know what love and marriage is anymore, just look at the statistics, right, so no biggie, `phfina.

Right?

I've heard this before, particularly from my European friends, but love, to me, is love, and it's a phenomenon, that if even if somebody says, well, it isn't, they know, in their heart, that it is, and it is serious, and making light of it only makes it more serious, not less. So, maybe a review of epistemology may help your argument, because this is a track that many, many people have trod, including philosophers, so, as you think, you have many others who've thought over this, very diligently, to help you form, or to counter, your arguments.

'Love isn't love, marriage isn't marriage' doesn't work. If your statement held (F-logic allows paradox), and they weren't, why are you giving any thought to what isn't?

Cognitive sciences help there, too.

It comes down to accepting responsibility for what people say to you. Do you accept it, or belittle it? Empower them, and yourself, for taking them at their word, or use logic and reason (sophistry) to distance yourself and themselves from their words by draining them of their meaning, paradoxically, by using semantics to argue that a thing isn't what it is?

When you embark on that path, you embark on viewing people as things, as 'it' spouting nonsense, and not 'thou' speaking from the heart.

And either are valid views. One is entirely materialist, and I, and Martin Büber, take exception.

When someone makes you especially giddy? Don't you see that as something special, for them at least, and if so, why not for you? Because you don't want the entanglement, the complication of a relationship with depth and honesty?

But then if you don't want the consequence of another person feeling something because you've opened up to share something of yourself, then ...

Well the obvious alternative is not to share yourself, or to shut them down, hard when they do get giddy, by telling them: "oh, you're just feeling silly; you'll get over it."

Ouch.

So, go ahead, say: oh, they're young. They're a fangirl. They don't know what they're saying.

That helps me, dealing with a girl who's just broken down and told me she loves me, because I wrote something that touched her heart in a way nobody else has ever done, but you, you adult, mature, reasonable people, instead of acknowledging her fear and her feelings, say: 'get over it, grow up, little girl.'

Leaving another breaking heart, or, worse, another person who hardens their heart, vowing never to open themselves up again like that and get hurt, then get ridiculed for it.

Today is the day someone truly dared to live, and got on her knees, 'pretending' to tell me she loves me.

Please don't make today also the day she closes off her heart, regretting her own daring, and dies, just a little bit, just a lot, because that cold, cruel world actually is, and is actually populated by jaded, hard-hearted people who 'know better.' Please don't be one of those people who sees hope in a naïve, sweet, young, inexperienced girl, and crushes it aborning. Please don't make her one of those people.

Someone opened her heart today. Can you dare to open your heart to hers?

I love you.

kisses, `phfina