I was thinking some more today — musing, as I might say, on “profound” philosophical questions in my favorite pub — about what, in our talks, my departed and sorely missed friend Bill Dalzell — someone whose intuitive ratiocination influenced me greatly (both his way of thinking and the actual thoughts) — communicated implicitly to me about the importance of intuition in cogitation, in decision making, in one’s life course

To put it another way, I was thinking about human relationships

When they work, become meaningful — meaningful and profound — when they endure, it is not because you and the other have worked out and reached an understanding or accommodations on most issues or one another’s views

It is because something deeper and stronger binds you

Call it love or fellow feeling

I have seen it so many times in married couples -– in the bond between my parents, for example

When, to put it simplistically, love and “custom” (lives lived together) mean the most, trump disagreements

I venerate reasoning and acumen in people

I also cherish persons with whom I have achieved something deeper when it comes to relationships. Them and the relationships

There is a deeper bond in life than that of affinity based on commonalities that are supposed to make people compatible. That deep something which binds people who become bonded in all sorts of circumstances and scenarios

— Roger W. Smith

  January 2023