A moment ago, the woman I love told me how “unsatisfying my response” was.

Less
than a minute before that, when I mentioned that we might both die
today, she responded by saying “hmm,” and looking back down at her
laptop.

I gaze at her tan, beautiful face, her eyes fixed on the
screen of her laptop. The wheels spin inside my head. I consider the
colossal importance of the news I just shared. How, in a way obvious
only to the male sitting up in bed reading the news, the possible
extinction of all life on earth overshadows a miracle of two people.

Discover the untold secrets of manifesting!

It
clicks. I see how the emotional tale she shared is truly more
significant, and that women are there to point these things out to men
sometimes.

I begin to laugh, although I’m quite aware that my
laughter is misunderstood. To her, the sound is like watching someone
drown your days-work-entrée under an inch of ketchup.

It occurs
to me that, in a way, it wouldn’t matter if the Large Hadron Collider
produces negative results. It wouldn’t matter if this device, a 17-mile
tunnel built to teach us the secrets of the Big Bang, goes awry. It is
being tested today despite the significant concerns of some scientists.

It
wouldn’t matter if this whiz-bang physicist toy turns France into a
black hole, flushing all life on earth down a cosmic toilet in a
fingersnap.

It wouldn’t have any meaning at all, but for the kind
of experience my love shared with me before I mentioned proton gizmos
and the sucking sound of an apocalypse.

She had shown me a news
story of a man and his autistic son who were swept out to sea. Working
from an entirely different perspective, this boy was gifted the chance
to spend all the time he wanted in the water he loved, his dad swimming
alongside.

Although he feared for both of their lives, the father
was affected by his son’s positive reaction. If he had been under the
added pressure of keeping his son calm, both may have drowned. He was
buoyed by the high spirits of his son, who enjoyed the swimming for
hours.

After four hours, the current pulled them away from each other, and he lost his son.

After the father was rescued, he found his son again.

Not only is the boy alive, but he still enjoys swimming.

There is a meaning in all of this, apart from Hadron Colliders and autistic boys.

There
is meaning, aside from the fact that women often need to remind men to
experience life emotionally instead of just taking it apart and leaving
the pieces sitting on a workbench.

Can we find this meaning every day? When we’re paddling just to stay afloat?

It
is possible we’ll all go down the drain. Any newspaper will remind us
of that. Enjoying the swim, however, may help keep our heads above
water long enough to feel saved.