Dear Dr. Date,
With only a few columns left this year, I hope you get a chance to answer this. Nearly eight months ago, my first real boyfriend, the only guy I have dated that I ever really cared about and maybe even loved, broke up with me. For the next several months I kept reinterpreting the reasons he gave for ending our relationship; sometimes it seemed to be my fault, other times, not. I guess I just don’t understand how people can change so much. How did it happen that I used to be very special to him and then not so special anymore? How do people change so quickly?
— Bewildered

Do you know how small we are in relation to everything? We humans are so small, so tiny. We are invisible specks of dust on this giant ball of rock. Earth is but a pathetic fraction of Jupiter which, in turn, is dwarfed by the sun. But our sun is an unremarkable blip in twirling sea of millions of blips that make up our Milky Way which is nothing but an ordinary spiral galaxy among billions of galaxies in the entire universe. If we could see all the stars in the universe, the night sky would be all light. Our struggles and joys are closer to nothing than they are to something.
Why do sorrows such as lost love haunt and occupy us as they do? Sweetheart, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I don’t want love and friendship to be deconstructed and reduced to a chemical reaction. The giddy beauty and harrowing pain of love comes from the irrational, not the rational.
There is nothing at the end of your quest for answers. It’s an empty journey that is destroying your spirit. Summer is nearly here. Look elsewhere for your peace. There is wonder all around you. It’s in the trees and sky and sun. Read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.”
Let go of the past, sweet. There is a greater love for you in the days and years to come. Today is your day to still the disquieting questions and let them pass unanswered.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for writing. Have a wonderful summer.