So, what’s all this philosophizing about love? Want to understand love? Ask Carmen.

Bizet has Carmen describe L’amour as a “rebellious bird.” Love, her basic message seems to be, lies outside our control. When she says, “Love me not, then I love you,” she voices both the fictional plots of unrequited love and the actual histories of many people, possibly, even you. Love, in Carmen’s operatic interpretation, has never followed a law, never been ordered, never been predictable.

She’s right, of course. There’s no accounting for how we grow into love or how love, like some bird, flies suddenly into our lives (or, for some, how it suddenly flies out of our lives). For most, if not all of us, the nature of love appears to be beyond articulation. What can we say? “I love you”? Let’s not go into how much. Much is a quantity. Even if there were measurable degrees of love, they might never be applicable when love either comes or leaves like a wild bird. The unexpectedness of love might be what makes it so attractive to us. The Carmen libretto says, “You think you hold it fast; it flees/You think you’re free; it holds you fast.”

Generally, we do like things to be in a recognizable place. Thus, we have furniture with drawers and rooms with purposes. That desire for associative place seems to extend into our emotions, and that sets up a scenario for perplexity. “Love me not, then I love you,” Carmen sings. “When least expected, there it is!”

No place. No time. No predictability. No age. No particular physical appearance. No drawer with folded, matching socks. No neat arrangement. No room with special purpose. Any place. Any time. Any age. Any appearance.

Exciting, isn’t it. Almost like being in a haunted house or on a theme park ride. The unexpected is what you expect. Avenues that make no sense. Crossroads without traffic lights. Robins that suddenly appear in spring and suddenly disappear in winter. If love were otherwise, would we bother with it any more than we bother with a sock drawer filled with matched pairs?

Maybe in our order we crave disorder; and then, having disorder, we try organizing. Love bounces between the two, and its arrival in the midst of disorder lasts until we order, when love’s natural entropy unexpectedly starts the process all over.

“Toreador, love awaits you,” the chorus of Carmen sings, and that leads to a bit of advice. Neither wait nor look for it. Love chooses its time and its place. Don’t like that advice because you want something ordered and predictable? Arrange your sock drawer. Predict the arrival of robins in spring and their leaving in winter. 

Looking for a really exotic place to capture your imagination? You don't need to travel far.

Could there be a stranger place on Earth? Is there one area with more TV documentaries devoted to it? Maybe, but Area 51 in Nevada certainly has peaked the interest of millions who seek answers to the unknown. If there were critters from outer space, they, too, would be intrigued. Why? Just the number of names for the place is astounding. Area 51 also goes by Homey Airport, KXTA, Groom Lake,  Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, Home Base, and Watertown, and to that list we can add Restricted Area 4808 North, which can be shortened to R-4808N. National Geographic has made a documentary. National Geographic! We all know how prestigious we consider those guys. If they think there’s enough material there for a documentary, there must be something significant about the place. And if the place is “restricted,” then the government “MUST,” so the aficionados say, “be hiding something, some alien or alien spacecraft deep in an underground hangar. They won’t release the secret information.”

Photo 51 is not a picture of Area 51 taken from a satellite. Rather, it’s a bit more of a close-up image. And it’s not even a photo on the order of what you do with your digital camera and your printer. It’s an X-ray image of DNA, and it’s the one Rosalind Franklin and her team of X-ray crystallographers made in the early 1940s. Photo 51 was, like Area 51, somewhat mysterious. But unlike Area 51, Photo 51 led to some very concrete information and revealed a secret. It’s the image that helped Watson and Crick uncover the mysterious structure of DNA, a discovery that has led to all we know today about the genomes of humans and other life and to branches of medical research that were as alien to the world before the early 1950s as Area 51 still seems to be for many people today.

Nature, not the US government, had hidden the structure of DNA for our first 200,000 years on the planet. For 10,000 human generations Nature had kept the secret in a place restricted from view. All of our ancestors were a collective secret place. All of them hid the secret of life deep within their cells. But now we know, and our knowledge has had practical applications, even leading to efforts to heal the sick. 

Why are so many more people seemingly interested in Area 51 than in Photo 51? Is the mystery of life elsewhere in the universe greater than the mystery of life on Earth? Look around. There are strange creatures everywhere: tube worms in the deep ocean, bacteria deep in rocks, starfish and the corals on which they feed, insects and arachnids, pandas and yaks. We are surrounded by alien-looking creatures in our air, water, and land. But here’s the difference. Through DNA and our chemical composition we appear to be related to all of them in some way. You want to find a mysterious place? Look around. Look at your own body. You hold more secrets than any government restricted area could ever hold. You are the embodiment of Photo 51. You are the secret held for 10,000 generations. National Geographic needs to produce another documentary just about you, the mysterious place of life's secrets.

Special sales depend on the principle of pro tanto. Buying depends on the principle, also. We bargain for partial payments. In law, pro tanto is a principle and term best suited to cases involving the government’s acquisition of private property and to cases involving partial payments on debts, but let’s apply it to human interactions that aren’t financial transactions. 

We can’t really repay one another for all we do. There’s no quantifying behaviors on a quid pro quo basis, no quantifying of acts altruistic or acts inimical. In every instance of human interaction, repaying is always partial. Empathizing with someone in a time of trouble? One can’t repay even if one wants to repay. What is the currency of empathy? There’s no currency that allows us to make an even exchange. We always repay in a different currency, and the exchange rate between currencies fluctuates.

“I don’t know how I can repay you for your kindness.” “Please accept this as a token of my appreciation.” “For your service, we want to give you….” “I don’t know who she was; she just came up and helped and then left. I wish I could thank her for her kindness.”

How do we pay back? We make partial payments. And everyone seems to understand the principle of “for so much.” We say, “I owe you,” or “I owe you one,” or “I owe you a favor.” What we know is that when we “owe one,” we might end up paying only ¾. Maybe the repayment “for so much” is 1.25. How do we measure? How do we calculate? In matters of emotion, sometimes the mere intent to pay becomes the payment.

Let’s face it. We interact in qualitative, rather than in quantitative ways. And somehow we all seem to understand how partial payments can be accepted as “payment in full” rather than pro tanto. 

The universe of challenge is relentless, and so must you be. Yes, being relentless is a grind, but look at your choices. Nothing stops. When you are free from a physical challenge for a moment, some intellectual, philosophical, or theological challenge engulfs you. When you feel secure in your logic and belief, you stub a toe, bruise an elbow, or have a bad hair day. The teabag of challenge steeps in your life.

What’s a person to do? Constant challenges surround, some new and others old. And then you realize that you, like the rest of the universe, challenge in some way everyone around you. Even when you believe you are the steady, unchallenging force in life, you face the struggle to maintain the steadiness, and others face the struggle to keep up, or change, or contest. The challenges are relentless, and challenges necessitate changes for anyone who wishes to survive, maintain, or evolve.  

Others, of course, do challenge you to become a character that is less challenging, more predictable, easier to deal with, just as you challenge them. Sometimes you think you might succumb, that you have only so much energy, and that it’s time to stop resisting. However, the universe of challenge never stops, regardless of your attitude, action, or inaction. So, you might think about weighing your choices.

Being relentless appears to be your best defense against a relentless universe. You can stop facing challenges when you leave this world. For now, facing challenges defines your existence. Rethink your philosophy. Rethink your theology. Rethink your behavior. Not necessarily to change them radically, but to maintain your defense against the relentless challenges the universe presents.