Sometimes I am impressed by the narrative structure of my own dreams.

Okay, so I've decided to start something new on the blog. Periodically I am going to respond to sayings we're all familiar with, pieces of conventional wisdom, and I will explain why these things are true or false. I will also answer supposedly unanswerable and/or rhetorical questions (for example: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? But I won't be answering that question today, perhaps not ever. But you get the idea).

Today I will be responding to this old chestnut: It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

FALSE.

Last night I had a dreaPublish Postm in which I met, began dating, and fell in love with a rather attractive and interesting woman. For a few weeks or months, everything went well, and then we had some kind of an argument, and I wound up catching her sleeping with one of my friends. In the dream, I understood the nuances and details of this situation, and it all seemed to make sense, but trying to recall it now I can't piece it all together. Anyway, the point is that the discovery of this left me with an absolutely gut-wrenching sense of betrayal and despair. So this dream had the highest of the highs-- falling in love with a seemingly perfect person-- and the lowest of the lows-- being betrayed by that apparently ideal mate AND one of your close friends. So, do we take the good with the bad? Should I have felt happy and fortunate to have experienced those positive emotions before it all went wrong? By the way, this was one of those dreams in which I was completely convinced this was real life. At no time did I have an inkling that this was a creation of my dreaming mind. And when I woke up and found myself in my apartment at 3:30 in the morning, this was the first thought that went through my head:

Well, thank God none of that ever happened.

So, if things are going to work out poorly, it is better to never love at all.

QED.