When you're little they tell you you're supposed to love everybody. No one ever tells you how to do it, just that its a good thing and you're supposed to. But what does it mean? Am I supposed to feel the same way about my wife that I feel about my mom that I feel about my sister that I feel about my kids that I feel about the homeless guy down the street?

Obviously that's not happening. Does it make me a bad person because I don't have the same feelings for everyone I know? I don't think anyone expects that. At least I hope not.

Because not only do I not feel the same about everyone, but my feelings for each individual person aren't even consistent. That's human nature. I mean, a kid's not going to feel the same way about a dad who's spanking him as one who's taking him to a ball game.

So your feelings always change and you can't have the same feelings for everyone, then how are you supposed to "love" everyone? What's it all about? Are you just supposed to be friends with everyone? Well, sometimes you fight with your friends, or tell them things that you wouldn't say to other folks.

Its stupid to think you could be friends with everyone, anyway. Good friends are hard to find, and there's a reason for that, because its hard to find people you have things in common with and who you get along with. And I don't care what anyone else says, there are always gonna be people who annoy the crap out of me, I don't get along with them and I don't want to spend any time with them. And people can deny all they want to, but everyone knows people like that.

To make things harder, the Bible tells you to love your enemies. It doesn't say "don't have enemies", which would be simple. I mean, it would be impossible to do, but simple at least to understand. I always try to be charitable with people, and assume they don't mean any harm by the stupid crap they do, but I think that falls under the heading of "not making enemies" rather than "loving the enemies you already have".

So how are you supposed to love everyone? Its easy to sit by yourself and manufacture some warm fuzzy feelings about planting trees and singing "Kumbaya", and then give the finger to the next jerk who cuts you off. And what about people who obviously do mean you harm? What about people who hate you? What about racists and Nazis and serial rapists and child molestors? You can't excuse their behaviour, and even if you could, excusing someone's behaviour is not the same as loving them.

Obviously, I don't think it has anything to do with how you feel. And I'll tell you why.

Let's say a guy meets a girl and there's this spark. They have just enough in common to be interested in one another, and just enough not in common to make it work. I mean, one is strong where the other is weak, and they recognize that in each other and the attraction is stronger because of it. And in the beginning it may all be emotions and sexual attraction and even overwhelming at times, but then things settle down and they get used to each other, they get married and have a kid or two, the feelings ebb and flow and change, but they stay together. Because even when their feelings are at their lowest and they absolutely can't stand to be in the same room with one another, if they're smart they still remember why they got together in the first place and that only a small part of it was emotional.

So how do you love other people? Well, how do you love yourself? You take care of yourself, want what's best for yourself, keep yourself safe and happy. You do these things apart from how you feel, and most of the time don't even think about them.

Here's what I think: When you love people, you want what's best for them, you don't wish harm on them, you warn them of danger. Sometimes it's hard and sometimes it makes you unpopular (ask anyone with kids), but that's what it is, and it has very little to do with how you feel.

See, that's the problem with people. Everyone's always asking how you feel and worrying about how everyone feels.

Let's say there are two kids in math and one of them is good in math and the other one sucks at math. It used to be that the kid who sucked was supposed to work extra hard at math, or get extra help. And it was ok because everyone can't be good at everything. And if the kid failed he took it over til he got it right, and then he felt good because he accomplished something. But now it seems like the idea is, hey, let's just stop grading kids because that puts them in categories and makes them feel bad when they fail or when another kid does better. And so everyone feels good but no one can do math anymore.

Or did you ever hear someone say "I feel that this is the best solution to the problem"? That's just stupid. Who cares how you feel? I would rather have someone feel bad about a solution that worked than feel good about one that made the problem worse.

No one talks anymore about what you know, or even what you think. It's all about what you feel. Everybody's got to feel good, all the time. And if you don't feel good you have to act out whatever it is. And you can't disagree with anyone or it might hurt their self-esteem.

I'm not talking about doing what "feels good". I'm talking about people who make feelings the most important thing in the universe, and they have a feeling and act on it, they make decisions when they're emotional and they just wind up hurting themselves and everyone around them. A kid is taught that his own self-esteem is the most important thing and that the sun rises and sets based on how he feels. And so the kid FEELS angry and he shoots up his school, or he FEELS sad and he jumps off a bridge, or he FEELS aroused and he fathers a child and leaves some poor girl to raise it alone.

They all get it from Hollywood. All these poets and ballerinas making romance movies about how you feel and getting married and feeling happy all the time. Why should we be taking lessons on life and marriage from these hippys who live in and out of rehab and stay married on average like 3 months?

Spock had it right, you know, and all those Vulcans on Star Trek. People think the Vulcans didn't have emotions, but they did. In fact, their emotions were so powerful and overwhelming that they almost destroyed themselves. But they all became logical and didn't let emotions get in the way of their decision-making processes. And if it meant that they weren't much fun at parties anymore, well, that's what alcohol is for.

But there's one thing I don't understand about Vulcan: They have emotions, but they develop a philosophy based on logic that saves them from destroying themselves. That's great. But how did they get a whole planet to adopt one philosophy? I mean, some of them didn't agree and went off to become Romulans, but all the rest of them became logical non-emotional Vulcans.

On earth, we disagree about everything. Even when we agree we still disagree. I mean, Catholics and Protestants are both Christians and yet they kill each other over one little chunk of Ireland. Iran and Iraq are both Muslim and they were at war for like 20 years. Native Americans are supposed to be all in tune with the land and they fought for generations between themselves til the white man showed up, and even then they didn't band together against him til it was too late. Thats not even touching on what we do when we don't agree with each other.

The Vulcans apparently never had this problem, which was fortunate for them. Otherwise they'd have wound up with all these different sects and factions, all taking slightly different angles on the logic thing and then killing one another over it.

Or maybe there is some big underground movement on Vulcan and their symbol is a smiley face. I wonder do they even have smiley faces on Vulcan.

Geez, now this is getting silly. I gotta get to bed.