Tag: God

Paltry Proverbs

On By Swarn GillIn Commentary, Philosophy, Psychology11 Comments

If there was one thing Facebook is good for (or possibly bad for) is the dispensing of canned advice through adages, proverbs, clichés, and quotes from a random assortment of famous people. I’m not going lie, I do love a good quote now and then. There have been great minds in our history who have profound things to say. There is one adage that annoys me to no end, and so you’ll have to forgive for doing a little bit of venting.

“God only gives you only what you can handle”.

Now this has nothing to do with me being an atheist. Even if I was a theist this statement would be wholly false. Like many of the adages floating out there on social media at best this applies to first world citizens, but even then it still seems like it could end up insulting a lot of people.

My first thought when I first heard the expression: well how many people die of starvation every day? For your information 1.5 million children starve to death in the world each year. That’s over 4,000 children a day, or about 1 child every 20 seconds. Clearly these children were given a situation in which they could not handle. Why would God give children such a situation to begin with?

What about all the people who die of cancer, heart disease, or other fatal conditions? What about the people who suffer nervous breakdowns, have undiagnosed trauma, severe depression? What of those who go a step further and tragically take their own life?

There is no doubt that all of us have a certain amount of adversity we have to face in life. We of course want to survive and for the most case if we can handle it, we will. Nobody wants to just let a difficult situation destroy their lives, or weaken them to the point of personal neglect. Ultimately we handle adversity the best way can, and hope that we are better and stronger for it afterwards. But there are plenty of situations that are beyond one individual.

What is most bothersome about the saying is what it implies about you if you couldn’t handle the situation. If God gives you only what you can handle, if you didn’t handle it, then it must be your fault in some way. You must be doing something wrong. If this message is supposed to give you strength to handle a situation, failure to do so may not bring you the peace you desire.

In the end it is a fairly empty piece of advice, applicable to relatively mild situations, and really only verifiable in hindsight to someone who got through a difficult situation successfully. Personally I think we can come up with something a little more helpful than this expression.

It’s not nothing

On By Swarn GillIn Philosophy2 Comments

 

Suddenly 3 chords came together and I had a melody that I thought I would blog about.

The first chord came in a very interesting book by Charles Seife called Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea.  This chord has been playing the longest.

The second chord occurred once while watching a debate on-line about whether religion still had value.  A difficult debate to have to say the least, but in that debate a physicist posited one of life’s larger questions which to be honest I am not sure I had asked before even though I like to think about such things.  “Why is there something rather than nothing?”  This chord was played again just recently by a fellow blogger who asked those in the blogosphere to answer the question “If God created the universe, why did he do it?”  This is like striking the same chord, but in a slightly different key.

The third chord was just now struck after reading a blog post by another blogger who had the statement “You cannot define yourself in the absence of another.”

So now let me try to bring it together if I can.  One of the intriguing thoughts I had from the first chord was how concept of nothing was tied to the concept of infinity.  Mathematics before was tied to geometry.  Things with area and volume and shape. There was no room for zero, nor was their really room for the infinite.  Accepting zero as a number meant you also had to accept infinity because when you divide any number by zero that is what you get (or negative infinity if you want to be picky).  Here we have two things are really the exact opposite of each other: everything and nothing.  I find that absolutely fascinating.  At least in a mathematical sense, one defines the other.

The second chord further made me contemplate nothing.  You might be thinking to yourself “Contemplating nothing Swarn?  You must be popular on the weekends with all that excitement”.  And you might be right with your sarcasm.  Well even if you are wrong with your sarcasm, I do appreciate sarcasm.  Anyway, back to nothing.  So in the answer to the question why is there something instead of nothing, I thought, well if there is just nothing.  Then not only is it not very exciting, there really is nothing to define.  In fact you can’t even define nothing, unless there is something for which to compare it to.  Pure nothingness or non-existence, even in the presence of something can at best be only categorized as such.  There are no measurements to be made or pictures to take of it.  It’s nothingness.

With the 3rd chord the melody began.  I thought about definitions of words.  I thought about any definition you might look up in the dictionary.  Not surprisingly you’ll find other words there to help you understand what one word means. You can look up those words.  But what if words started to disappear from a language?  As this happens our ability to define any one word disappears.  I then imagine 3 words left “cat”, “dog”, and “not”.  Cat – not dog, Dog – not cat.  The word “not” doesn’t get a definition, you just have to learn it contextually. 🙂  Definitions of any word cannot occur in the absence of other words.  More to the point it seems sensible to me that in answer to the question why is there something instead of nothing the answer becomes “there has to be”.  We cannot even know nothing without their being a universe.   Whatever everything might be it’s in the universe.  Or multiple universes I suppose.  And anything that isn’t, is nothing.  Nothing by itself, as already discussed, has no value either.  Nothing and everything are two sides of the same coin.  They define each other.

Now right now you are probably thinking I want to have what he’s smoking, or else “Get a job hippie!” (I have a job thank you! 🙂 ).  So what if there is no reason for everything other than existence had to happen?  And what if, as Douglas Adam said, “Whatever happens, happens”?  What if it’s then all on our shoulders to create purpose?  Maybe that’s the best gift we can give to someone.  The freedom to develop their own purpose in life. With the recognition of course that purposes can change as we do as well as the universe around us.

Nice to Meet You

On By Swarn GillIn Prose and Poetry10 Comments

If there is no God then you are a fool,
If there is one, then I’m a fool too,
And if there is something else,
Something we haven’t thought of yet
We’re both fools.  But isn’t it wonderful,
The kinds of things we can conjure up?
Things to prove and things to lose.
The pain of things gone horribly wrong,
And all we can do is put things right.
I’ve got a few answers,
Maybe you’ve got some too.
Together we can know the truth,
Or else tell one hell of a story,
Either way, we’ll take the world by storm.
But let’s start with the real facts,
We are imperfect and fragile,
We are curious and resilient,
There is only so much we can take,
And it’s all really not that fair.
The only thing that I can be sure of,
Is that in the end…
All is forgiven

Evidently it’s Evidence Part II

On By Swarn GillIn Education, Science11 Comments

Part I, probably doesn’t provide too much pause for thought, but hopefully this one will.  I’ve been told my posts are long, so I’m trying to shorten things up. 🙂

Perhaps I should also preface before I begin that almost anything can count as evidence.  However it seems that people with little understanding of scientific investigation often make the mistake of delineating good evidence from bad.  Or being able to determine why one source of evidence is weaker than another.  Because after all I could argue that it is faith that I believe the sun will come up tomorrow, when the truth is I don’t really know for sure.  The fact that it has come up all the days of my life, is some pretty good evidence.  It’s even better evidence that it has come up for others.  And it seems as I look through historical evidence from before I was born it has been coming up pretty regularly.  And then there is the evidence that the Earth is rotating and that we are revolving around the sun.  It may be that all that changes tomorrow, but it seems unlikely. So at the very least, I can say that my faith has some pretty solid substance to it. (Also please be aware that I do know that the sun actually doesn’t come up, it is the Earth’s rotation that gives it the appearance of rising. lol)

Here are some of the things that many people seem to think of as evidence:

  • anecdotal evidence
  • a contrary opinion
  • a book
  • a “gut feeling”
  • a low probability event (a coincidence)
  • celebrities or other famous people
  • a documentary
  • a movie
  • media
  • even worse  – social media
  • the number of hits you search for something on the internet

There are probably more things that could be added but these are some of my favorite.  Part of the problem is that any one of these could be right.  I am not going to address each one, but there are times when your “gut” tells you, you are in danger and you are right.

From hm.dinofly.com

Anecdotal evidence can also be correct.  I could say “In my experience the sun comes up every morning” and I would be right.  Sometimes celebrities are correct, and documentaries are accurate.  Someone who is disagreeing with you may actually be doing so for good reason.  Because he/she knows more than you do. And occasionally a news story might even report actual information. 🙂

I am a fairly big food snob.  I’ll admit it.  I’m probably even more proud of that fact than I should, but tasty food is an important pleasure in life to me.  Not to mention sitting down to a good meal, can be romantic, social, and/or cultural.  One of my favorite things is to

Pad thai from myrecipes.com

introduce people to new food and new culinary experiences.  It has often been the case that someone will say they really don’t like a certain food.  Upon further investigation you find that the one time they tried it, the person didn’t know how to cook it properly so they had a bad experience, and then never tried it again.  Often if I get them to give what I have prepared a try, they find that they actually like it.  The point is that our own experiences are often flawed.  I am sure the person when they first tried badly cooked spinach they had no intentions on hating spinach, they simply didn’t like what they had, and assumed it was the fault of the spinach and not the cook.

While it is not surprising from an evolutionary standpoint why we would take our own experiences as truth, it is clear that as individuals we are prone to many biases.  If you know nothing about snakes, it is ALWAYS safer to stay away from snakes since a few can be deadly.  Surviving and being safe represents 99% of our evolution as a species, but if civilization has any true advantages, it is the ability to break free from the fearful uncertainty of the wild and to give us time for reflection and thought.  The lack of detailed knowledge about something is the birthplace of beliefs that are based on little or poor evidence.  This is why education is so important.  This is why understanding of science is important.  This is why critical thinking is important.

More importantly this is why humility is important.  One lifetime, at the very least in the length it is now, is never enough time to know all there is to know (if that is even possible).  But when you have true humility, not just humility before God, but humility before all existence, you accept that you don’t have all the answers.  You accept that there is still more for you to know, and to learn.  You can accept that you can be mistaken.  When you accept this, then you can delve into the next set of questions.  How is it that we can come to know things?  What are different ways of knowing?  How do they work?  What is their reliability?

from http://www.jasonwhowe.com

How boring would life be if you just decided on how everything works at the age of 30 and then just criticized everyone else the rest of your days? Keep asking yourself questions, and enjoy the experience of enlightenment that comes from a lifetime of learning.  The feeling of enlightenment is euphoric and is an edge that never dulls, no matter the age.

Questions

On By Swarn GillIn Philosophy4 Comments

The human mind is amazing.  Think of things you can imagine.  Some are real.  Some are fantastical.  Some are not possible.  Some may be possible.  The range of what we are minds are capable of coming up with is astounding.

From http://www.daviddisalvo.org

Now humans are also curious.  Part of our imagination may be to visualize something and then ask ourselves.  How can I make this dream, this fantasy I have, real?  The fact that we can make any of these dreams real is impressive.  Any inventor though will probably have more failures than successes.

You may be questioning where am I going with this, and you’d be right to question me.  The truth is I don’t exactly know and luckily this is part of the point.

Given what are minds are capable of, and given that only a handful of our dreams ever can become reality, is it possible that we can dream up questions which have no answer?  I can ask a lot of questions that have no answer.  For instance I might ask “When we build a ship capable of traveling across the galaxy how many planets can one visit in a lifetime?”  Of course there are answers that you can give, but how much accuracy or value would such an answer have?  It is first contingent on a device we don’t have, asks us to know the number of planets in the galaxy which is something we don’t know, and we also are uncertain what our lifetimes might be at some future date when this device is available.  Such a question might have value.  If I cared enough about the answer I may devote my life to trying to see out into our galaxy more clearly, or build a faster than light speed spaceship, or perhaps try to increase our life expectancy, so that one day people can see lots of planets potentially.

The question is a loaded one because of all the uncertainties in the question, and it has no precise answer.  There are however grander questions we can ask.  What does God want from us?  There is uncertainty as to God’s existence so the answer becomes difficult.  And even if there was one, most cultures disagree on God’s nature, so trying to determine what God wants becomes rather challenging.

From library.sasaustin.org

But we can get even grander.  What is the meaning of life?   I would respond back with “whose life?” or “how do you define life?”  But let’s go a step further to a related question: Why are we here?  The simplest of all questions.  Not much ambiguity to it all.  Those who might have an answer have no evidence to back it up.  Many would simply say they don’t know.  And answers of course vary from person to person.  Of all the many questions we can ask, perhaps we can answer them all;  partly by answering some smaller questions first before getting to the bigger parent question.  But what if there are some questions like “Why are we here?”  that have no answer?  What if this question is a simply a product of our wonderful minds.  Nevertheless one of our inventions.  We invent machines, concepts, why not questions? And while the question “Why are we here?” seems a natural question to ask,  must every question have an answer?  Maybe our answers are inventions as well. What if the only answer to that question is “We just are”.  That seems quite unsatisfying because “Why” has not been addressed.  Making it not really the answer at all.  Just a truth which we might have to accept.

And if “Why are we here?” really has no answer, can’t existence still be wonderful? Does there have to be some grand plan in order for you to be happy?  Is there no value in a satisfying career, making the world a better place, raising your child to be happy and strong, bringing smiles to the faces of friends and family, giving to those who have less than you?  Maybe it is these smaller questions we should be trying to answer with our lives.  The bigger question has almost no value to the countless millions who live in abject poverty. If you are reading (or writing this blog) you have the privilege in life to ponder this big question more deeply.  Would the answer really change you all that much?  Is the answer preventing you from being a good person?  Do you need an answer to see that love is better than hate?  That peace is better than violence?  That generosity is better than greed?  Would an answer make learning physics, chemistry, or biology meaningless?  Would an answer make creating art, writing, or making music any less enjoyable or meaningful?

The only seems clear is that there are many questions to be asked, many questions that are important, and that we should never stop asking questions. 🙂

Agrajag: Defenseless

On By Swarn GillIn Humor, Philosophy, Science2 Comments

Being in Australia you’re supposed to represent my near future, but your blogging into the wee hours of the morning sounds more like my recent past.  Thank you for your wonderful reply. 🙂

Your post can certainly be about racism as it has been on my mind obviously a lot of late.  Not only the last few days, but ever since the Travyon Martin verdict too.  Not sure if that news story hit Australia, but it was a rather sad case where a 17 year black kid was shot by a Latino man on a neighborhood watch because he thought he look suspicious.  He called the police and the police told him to stand down and that they were on their way.  Instead he went after the kid and when the kid attacked him after a forced confrontation and the guy pulled out a gun and shot the kid, claiming it was self-defense.  While I don’t believe the guy was racist, the judicial system certainly is, not to mention the gun laws in the state of Florida supported this man’s actions and he was acquitted of any wrong doing.  Racism is a fine topic to begin with.  Who knows where we will end? 🙂

I don’t think 24 resilient, thinking humans is going to be enough.   We’d probably be exiled, because that would be the stupid thing to do to your last 24. lol What you describe is the premise for a movie called Idiocracy actually.  Not sure if you’ve seen it.  Basically since non-thinking people seem to be outbreeding the thinkers that in the future the population will be dominated by idiots. lol  It’s quite amusing actually. 🙂

Human babies are quite defenseless.  It is true.  I suppose there could be lots of reasons why.  The first thought that comes to my mind that the simple bonus of having a higher intelligence as an evolutionary advantage allows us a greater variety of options in protecting our young, so the young don’t need to just get ready to flee like a fawn or colt.  In addition the fact that we are social animal means that children are also protected by the community and not just by parents.  Humans developing physical attributes quickly simply wouldn’t have been a necessary adaption.

Defenseless Baby (Photo Credit: http://www.dangerouscreation.com/2009/02/so-innocent-so-defenseless-so-gullible/)

If intelligence was favored by our species then we have the ability to also teach more through communication and personal guidance.  We can communicate more complex thoughts and ideas than other animals, but this learning too takes time and perhaps at the cost of the development of physical skills as well.  I would imagine that a human child growing up in the wild with parents would be more independent than ones growing in a more sedentary lifestyle.  That being said, I think it’s interesting how the helplessness of the human child promotes a more sedentary lifestyle.  I guess we were destined to farm and create civilization.  lol

Guns, Germs, and Steel in addition the Douglas Adams speech that I linked you really are the two things that led me down an intellectual path of looking at society in a completely different way.   They were an intellectual springboard I have to say. 🙂  I completely agree with your statement “that change is the only constant”.  It’s especially a good statement because of its seemingly paradoxical nature. 🙂  And you also expressed it quite beautifully when you were talking about using the physical universe to guide our decisions.  It seems so odd to me that, it is quite fearful to people.  It is grand and always changing and I guess that is the source of fear.  It’s probably the change most likely, because after all God is a fairly grand idea and many people believe in God.  Of course the nature of God has changed throughout history but people prefer to see him constant or unchanging.

Forgiveness (written April 24th, 2013)

On By Swarn GillIn Commentary, Philosophy15 Comments

I’ve been very caught up in the idea of forgiveness lately as a result of the Boston bombing.  As everybody knows I am an atheist so when I see the many “prayers” go out to victims and their families I try to simply see it as people wishing good things for people.

What one never sees however is prayers for the person who committed the horrific act.  In many ways you can sympathize with this.  As human we feel anger, outrage, hurt.  There are many reasons not to forgive.  However, what’s interesting to me is that if you believe in the power of prayer, then the perpetrator is just as worthy of prayer as any of the victims if not more so.  The victims likely have support of friends and loved ones, whereas the perpetrator is likely quite alone.  Again, I’m not saying that perhaps we can be morally okay with feeling that way, I’m simply saying that, especially as Christians, if you believe in prayer, you believe in miracles, and you believe in redemption then there is no one who needs redemption more than the person guilty of great crimes against his or her fellow man.  If what MLK said is true, that only light can drive out the darkness, then there is nobody with more darkness in their soul than someone who could try to murder a large group of people.  Does not the divine light drive out darkness even better?

It brings up the more important question.  Can any of us be saved?  Many Christians talking about how they felt saved by giving their heart to Jesus, but can we ever truly believe in someone like the Boston Marathon bomber’s true repentance or any other person who commits a horrible crime for that matter?  Most people call for the person’s death, the hate is strong as you watch comments on social media.  Is there a certain level of violence that we can tolerate and still believe that person can be redeemed and do good in this world?  Is it the nature of a crime?  What I thought was interesting was thinking about the question, “Well what if it was someone who was dealing drugs?”  I have in fact heard testimony (in the Christian sense) from drug dealers who turned their life around by becoming Christian.  Everybody feels inspired.  However it may be quite likely that drug dealer was responsible for many more deaths from people who overdosed on drugs he or she sold.  How inspired would anybody be by the Boston bomber if he said he found Jesus, cried, and got down on his knees and prayed?  Even if he was completely repentanthow many people would buy it?  Christian or non-Christian?

I was watching the news yesterday and they addressed this topic to a certain degree and had two pastors on the news (as if pastors know the most about forgiveness) and asked them what do you do to comfort people in these times?  How do you get them not to abandon God when these things happen?  Not surprisingly they said well you have to make peace of the situation by becoming closer to God because that is where your loved ones who were killed are now.  With God.  (Of course they could be in hell but ignore that).  But he also said that forgiveness was important.  When the news anchor asked “How do you forgive in a situation like this, because I struggle with this”?  Both pastors responded that by forgiving you let go of the anger, and that you should forgive for your own benefit not for anybody else.

This struck me as odd.  In the Christian doctrine forgiveness is big.  Forgiveness represents compassion as well, which is also big.  If they are going to argue that getting closer to God is the answer in these times because your deceased loved ones are with God, then shouldn’t another way of getting closer to God be by being merciful and forgiving as God (or Jesus does…well they are one in the same…I think).  But more than that forgiveness is not supposed to be just for you.  When you say “I forgive you”…YOU are forgiving someone else.  Thus the act of forgiving must truly benefit both.  Someone has caused you harm and you let go of your anger and they have the benefit of your compassion.  And it’s possible by your compassion they are shown the true beauty of humanity (and if you’re religious… God’s grace) and will mend their ways.  That is the hope, and a hope that does happen even if it is rare.

If you want to know what this atheist believes, then it is that we can change, we can learn and grow.  It may take a long time, but you are more likely to make the world a more peaceful place with forgiveness and compassion to all creatures that walk upon it than you are through violence and hate.  As I’ve stated before, this is the only existence we can be sure of, and to erase somebody from existence is a very serious measure, especially when it is our hate and anger that has ruled our hearts.

To quote a Genesis song we “kill what we fear, and we fear what we don’t understand”.  This is human nature perhaps.  When these things happen it is so hard to understand, we feel fearful, and so killing is what many people feel is the best way to deal with it.  I think there are other solutions however than killing, even when people would try to kill us.  Finding compassion in the darkest of moments is one of the hardest things in life, but I think it is a worthy goal.

Peace all.

What is Love? (written Nov. 12th, 2012)

On By Swarn GillIn PhilosophyLeave a comment

Humanity has been trying to define this since the first musicians and poets, perhaps even earlier.  So I figured I might as well take my shot at it.

My central thesis is that love is too narrowly defined by society and as a result we don’t experience as much love as we are capable.  I am of the opinion that no feeling of love should be discounted and that love when it happens is always a good thing.  I am normally one that approaches everything from academic standpoint, but I am going to try and keep most that out here, because my opinions are a product of both what I have read, but also from experience.  And ultimately, regardless of what we might learn academically about love, much of the views we form about love does seem to be experiential.

So perhaps to start, we should look at what we love.  I feel that love deepens in accordance with the complexity and changeability of what we love.  Which is why loving another human being is the most satisfying, but also the most difficult and sometimes rather perilous.    I feel that this is one of the reasons why people find it easier to show love towards pets, because they are relatively simplistic in comparison to humans, and are less likely to change in personality.  Provided you show love and care they will give back that love in care.  In many ways I feel this is the attraction of God as well.  However a religion defines God, God while perhaps quite complex is also unchanging and I think many people find this appealing.

In the realm of other humans, we feel love towards family, we feel love towards friends and lovers.  As a quick academic aside there is an evolutionary reason for feeling love towards family (genetic interest), love towards friends (reciprocal  altruism) and love towards those we have sexual relationships with (both genetic interest combined with reciprocal altruism for the purposes of helping offspring survive).    But putting this aside, I believe that we categorize love we feel towards different people, but I would see the feeling of love is often indistinguishable only the way that express that love is different.  This is for obvious reasons and that is important, but in general I feel that when we over categorize love and in essence try to define it under narrow criteria we lose some of its value and joy.  For instance we accept the fact that if we have a second child that we can love that new child as much as the first.  You can love your mother just as much as your father or one cousin just as much as another.  And this would be true for friends also.  Now obviously all these people are slightly different and so how you express and show that love towards them or the reasons why you love them will be different.

What we don’t accept is that when you fall in love with someone, that you can’t fall in love with someone else and still feel the same love you felt for another person.  There is some logic to this of course.  Part of this has to do with the act of “falling in love”.  Falling in love is quite the emotional roller coaster.  The physiological changes are immense, and anybody who has had that to happen will know that they are literally not in their right mind for a good period of time. There is a reason for the expression “love is blind”.  The act of falling in love often defies reason, which makes it more wonderful because that sort of loss of control is so intense and so unique that it makes the experience very spiritual.  This is probably a good thing again from an academic standpoint because you want the experience to feel very significant since the care of offspring is a long term commitment. (And yes I know that we don’t have to create offspring, but that is the evolutionary goal of all life of which we are included).   The key is that intense feeling of being “in love” fades, which is not to say that love gets worse, but the way it feels simply changes.  You get your sanity back. J  That feeling is not supposed to last 20 years and probably not even 10 years.  The point I’m trying to make here is that nature has not prescribed how many times we are supposed to fall in love, only that we will fall in love, possibly multiple times.  This feeling cannot be control, you do not choose who you fall in love with, it just happens.  Just because you are already with someone doesn’t mean it can’t happen again.  I feel that we as a society we find it easy to condemn that person and this is wrong.  However, I think also if you are with somebody already and you fall in love with someone else, we too often tie more meaning to that than there really is.  We can turn our lives upset down, and leave the person we are with for what we think of greener pastures, only to find ourselves, after the “falling in love” feeling fades to the same problems we had before.

I truly believe that our ability to feel love is unlimited, but what we are limited by is energy and time.  This is the only limit that can be fairly placed on love.  In life we must make choices.  Perhaps not about who we love more, but who we expend more of our time and resources on in expressing that love.  The amount of love you can show one child if you only have one, as opposed to 3 children is clearly more, even if you feel the same love for all your children.  We often regret most not being able to express love in proportion to our feelings.  And this can be a sad truth in life.

Love is beautiful.  Love inspires.  Love gives strength.  Love helps you grow and learn.  Love makes us better.  Even if we have limited time and energy, we should try to never be jealous when someone we love feels more love in their heart for more in this world.  Love is a good thing, and often means the most when you love without having a good reason to.  Love also happens rarely, which makes it special when it happens to you, and it should always be cherished.

Perhaps the only thing that all love has in common is that it hurts when one is rejected: whether it is a friend, a parent, a child, a lover.  We might feel that hurt in different ways, but it all has the power to give us sleepless nights, sobbing, stress, and depression.  So maybe Haddaway had it right all along in answering the question.

What is love?

Baby don’t hurt me, no more.

 

But isn’t this also what makes love beautiful?  If love was so certain I truly feel that the joy would not be as a great.   Choose to feel the joy, and life will always feel full.  I am thankful for all those in this world who have touched my heart and soul.  I promise to keep reminding you of how thankful I am for that, and hope I can touch your heart and soul in return.