Love Is Lovelier The Second Time Around

Ryan Dempster moves from the closer's role to the starting role and flourishes. Don Imus makes a slightly racist and derogatory comment on the radio and is taken off the air, and then reinstated months later...though he did the same thing again shortly after his reinstatement, so maybe that's a bad analogy. Anyway, even Senator John McCain was raised from the dead to run for president in a party where the other candidates' campaigns were as dead as...well...he was.

Okay, so I'll admit that being old(really, REALLY old) doesn't qualify you as dead, but my point is that in the day of instant gratification and a world where first impressions reign supreme(and apparently one where the should also be a MAXIMUM age for a presidential candidate), second chances are making a comeback. In essence, the rebirth of the second chance is giving rebirth to second chances.

On the one hand there's a friendship long since believed dead and buried, reanimated and rejuvenated. A testament to the power that one comment can have, and the difference one heartfelt message from an individual to another can make.

On the other hand is a love given a second chance.

It's crazy how big a difference very small things not only can, but do make in our daily lives. And proof of the key of communication to relationships is ever present. If one person doesn't tell the other what they want out of a relationship, the latter will never truly know what the former wants and will act on their own judgment. However, of the same concept, if the latter is too stubborn or afraid of hurting the former's feelings to just admit that they don't know what the former wants, they are just guessing and many mixed signals are bound to occur until the whole relationship short circuits and explodes in a ball of flame. And it is also ever present in the fact that one small problem which is easily fixed, goes unnoticed by one, and is let go by the other in hopes it will resolve itself, but then grows into a tumor that takes the whole relationship down with it.

All of this brings me to the true key of love and relationships, and its not love, caring, understanding, or even communication. The key is based in all of these, but is so much more, and yet so much simpler than that. The key is, for lack of a better term, early diagnosis. That is to say, the key is to have the understanding in one another to recognize the problem, the love and caring to express the problem in a constructive way to the other person, and the communication to work the problem out not only while it is still small, but also still treatable.

But.

There's another cure in desperate yet hopeful times.

Every relationship or friendship comes with a reset button. You can't always use it, because it loses effectiveness. Its like an EMP. When used, it does its job, quickly and effectively, however, it needs to charge fully to have its full effectiveness, and if you use it continually on half charge, you lose faith in it and abandon it all together.

The reset button is the ultimate in second chances. It doesn't ask why, or how, it just does it. Your computer crashes, you press the reset button, and it doesn't protest. It powers off as soon as possible, and then, boots back up, ready to allow you to go back to killing that 64 elite that is driving you insane in Terokkar, if only you hadn't been nerfed last patch it wouldn't matter, and if Blizzard could just make the game run smoother....again neither here nor there.

So, in this day of second chances, in this era where the end isn't necessarily the end, and where everything is negotiable, I pay tribute to the second chances that I've both given and received, and in looking back upon all this, I realize that it was never really a second chance for these things, just a continuation of the chance they deserved to have in the first place.



Quotes And Thoughts For The Day:

"The Atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.

Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.

I need you so much closer

I need you so much closer
So come on, come on"

~ Transatlanticism – Death Cab For Cutie


"Sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I can't help but ask myself how much I let the fear
Take the wheel and steer
It's driven me before
And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal
But lately I'm beginning to find that I
Should be the one behind the wheel

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there

So if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?
It's driven me before
And it seems to be the way that everyone else gets around
But lately I'm beginning to find that
When I drive myself my light is found

Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there,

With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there,
I'll be there

Would you choose the water over wine
Hold the wheel and drive

Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there

With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there,
I'll be there”

~ Drive - Incubus


-- Robert I is a freelance fiction writer, sports analyst, poet, and political cynic. His Blog can be found through his facebook LiveBlog or at Our Lives In Retrospect. His sports writing can be found at Bleacher Report.