there are those who have struggled wisely and those who struggled unwisely...

underneath it all they're looking for meaning, a powerful sense of connection that enlarges your sense of self.

That sense of self enlargement may begin lower down Maslow's hierarchy of needs: the need to be admired, envied, to

stand out, to count for something, to have an effect on people... this may be outgrown, OK, people saw, they

admired, they wanted what I had, my male prowess was acknowledged, then you either find yourself hooked up with a

stranger you thought you knew, or you discover new levels of mutual evolution, kind of a thrilling feeling of

acceleration in your butt when you realize you are growing twice as fast as you possibly could on your own, that's

when you really appreciate the value of how the differences between aren't hopeless chasms but valuable shifts of

perspective (assuming there's congruence at the level of basic beliefs about life)... sure you can live with a

round of ego recharging, one after another for a while until you reach a point where each one becomes more draining

than the last one, you get this weird feeling in the pit of your stomach that you should be some other place with

your mind, you need to make things deeper, fuller... comic books won't cut it any more, you want to read

novels...