A strange personal story.

This happened once or twice, soon after I got in a serious relationship with my first girlfriend. I don't talk or think about it that much, but my recent reading of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth has brought this memory to mind, so I want to make it count.

This strange paragraph of my life happened as I was driving my new girlfriend home from a night out with our clique of friends. Yes, I had alcohol that night and understand it's wrong.

I had had some drinks, but she had only drank a little bit, because she was underage. I'm not sure if there was a trigger, and if there was it was not obvious at all. As I stopped in front of her house, we sat for a bit inside the car and I started crying uncontrollably. I remember everything about that moment very clearly: the way I snugged myself in her embrace, the very intense sad feeling that suddenly came over me, my utter lack of words to explain what was happening and my girlfriend's understanding. I cried for half an hour or maybe more.

A couple of possible causes have come to mind while reading this book. However, now - as back then - the rationalization of an emotion is irrelevant. What matters is the emotion itself, just for the sake of it. An emotion can never show you who you are, but it has its own value.