Does Absence Make The Heart Grow Fonder?

I hate it when I can’t sleep, especially when I need to wake up early the next morning.

It seems like my mind wonders on forever with no end in sight.  My thoughts tonight led me back about 6 or 7 years to one of my previous relationships.  I remember a conversation that I had with an ex about sex.  It was a crazy conversation, but it doesn’t feel taboo to discuss it in this blog.  Like many of my other thoughts, I feel like this conversation was about sex but applies to life.  We were talking about why she doesn’t try to make sex great every time she does it.  Her argument was that if she tried her best every time then it wouldn’t be special when she did.  I argued that if you apply that concept to school then she would intentionally be a C student so that her parents would appreciate it more when she got an A.  We debated all night and I’m still not sure that there’s a right answer.

I fully understood her perspective because I feel like in order to appreciate good times; you have to have bad times.  I think about how much I agree with that stance and at the same time how much I disagree with it.  I recently commented on a blog (yeah, I’m not sure why either) about a former skinhead that went through a great deal of pain to have his racist tattoos removed.  Although I could understand why people felt like this was a good act I also couldn’t understand how you could applaud a person who used to hate and has decided to stop hating when there are so many that never hated in the first place.  It made me feel like I should have been a worse kid so that when I decided to turn my life around I would get more attention.  Somehow, I don’t think it really works that way for black people in America.  Compare the number of people that know Malcolm X as a hateful racist person to those that know of his view changes later in life.  Then again, he wasn’t a skinhead and didn’t go through a painful procedure to have his tattoos removed.

Alright, back to the title.  Does absence make the heart grow fonder?  I think about the fact that people look forward to the weekend so much.  When people get a vacation they travel or do something to celebrate.  However, when people have all week off because they’re unemployed or retired, they get depressed and feel useless.  When you have a crush on a person you are overwhelmed with love for that person.  Flowers are given, doors opened, constant touching but eventually that gets old or people use the excuse that they got old and things change.  If not for distance or some form of absence, things seem to get harder to appreciate.  It makes me wonder how people do any particular thing for any length of time.  For some reason, this concept is easy to understand based on how and to whom it’s presented.  If you ask anyone about eating the same food every day most people would agree that at some point they get tired of it.  Some people would argue that they could eat pizza every day if its prepared differently, but some would realize that even though they love pizza that would not be as tempting as egg foo young after having pizza for a week straight.  If you apply this concept to anything else then it becomes a great debate.  Personally, I’m tired of restless nights.