DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR

B. McGILLICUDDY

It's a joke. No, I'm not kidding, IT IS A JOKE. A cacophonous mumble uttered under our breath for the sake of a nervous laugh. Are you laughing yet? Are you entertained? Because we're decidedly not. The reason being that we're not only the tellers, we happen to also be the punchline.

Love is a wimpy little thing. It makes you cry. It makes you lie to yourself about the trivial minutia in your life and convinces you that these little things are actually important. Look at you, sighing and grumbling and trying to muster some resolve, while all the while you are just one of seven billion semi-self-aware specks in a potentially infinite universe potentially infinitely connected to an infinite number of other universes.

What makes you think you're important? That you're worth anything else's time?

Your brain does. And you know what your brain is? Potentially one of the most complex naturally-occurring constructs in the universe, and it happened by accident. Can you believe that? Unless you believe in God, it is an accident, and if you do believe in God, that's just more spectacular in my opinion: that your brain has the ability to imagine and possibly personify the universe as a purposeful and absolute thing.

Your brain has the ability to convince itself that, despite everything else in nature's instinct to perpetuate its existence as long as possible, at any costs, that it's a worthwhile endeavor to cast all security asunder and all sanity to the wind in the pursuit of another weak and impatient human being. Are you laughing yet?

The joke's not over.

B. McGILLICUDDY