You can't make someone love you with a song

The other day I was in my family room listening to Tim and Leslie talk about Tim's current classes and potential career options. He's majoring in management, so the exciting prospects included in their discussion all required serious, adult-y words like "financial advisor," "acquisition," and "office." I won't lie, my mind started wandering at the first mention of accounting.

It occurred to me at that point that, while I will presumably someday have a "real" job (unless I pull a Beverly Hillbilly or, if I'm lucky and discover a penchant for respirators, an Anna Nicole Smith), I'll never fully live in the same kind of utilitarian real world that people like Tim or, say, Donald Trump do. Whatever career I decide on will likely in no way ever involve real estate, finances, or anything that insinuates that I make any money. I'll never fully understand the stock market, worry about the intricacies of owning a small business, or have my mind totally wrapped around immediate concerns. I'll always care more about Shakespeare than standard deviation, and as such my life will never be entirely practical.

That little fact, incidentally, doesn't surprise me at all. For some reason what shocks me is the realization that some people probably go a year or more without thinking about books.

I think our culture sometimes stresses love, specifically what I earlier termed the "marital, 'til death, Fred and Ethel-type love," too much. I'm starting to get to that age where I feel a little underdeveloped for not having been "in love" before, like that one remaining squeaky guy in eighth grade who missed the first go around on the voice changing boat.

I'm not going to deny the severity, passion, or importance of Golden Anniversary love, but I think all the love that falls into the "other" category tends to get underemphasized, getting lumped unceremoniously under "love for family" or "love for friends," as if categorization is remotely logical; you love each person you do in unbelievably diverse ways and depths for infinitely wide-ranging reasons. Categories are impossible unless we want to start making ones like "Love for people you click with so well that no matter how much time passes, you can always pick up right where you left off." Or "Love for the people you understand to the point that you practically serve as their brain." Or "Love for the one person capable of making milk come out your nose from laughing (even more significant if you're lactose intolerant)."

The dubious state of "In Love" is extremely powerful, of course, but not the end all be all. Even if it exists as a single, specific brand of love, it exists as one of millions. Its presence is not necessary for me to be deliriously happy, to be in gut wrenching pain, or to be, for one or two people, willing to die.

How many movies can Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson do together? Seriously.