Loving the Scientist

I am in love. I am in love with a person who is very different from me. He believes that there are many things he can't explain in this world, but he believes in science instead of god. He can't relate to a lot of the things I do, or the things I feel, but he respects me enough to not mock me for them. He says he loves the spiritual part of me, that he sees the benefit I get from it, and how I help others with it. He is in grad school right now getting a PhD in Environmental Engineering. He is on a very linear, intellectual path. My path wanders and weaves as it always has, and often I can't see the path in front of me. It's foggy in Berkeley you see.

At times I wish he were more like me. I wish that we were on more similar paths, but then I think about what that would really mean. Would we constantly be comparing ourselves to each other? Would it get confusing who's path belongs to who? Would we have to explain it all to each other as we go? That sounds like a lot of work. Distracting work. I sort of like that I get to have my path all to myself. He can't relate to most of it, just as I can't understand the math scribbled on his white board, but I know that math means that one day he'll be helping people get clean water and he knows one day I'll be using my own math to guide people along their spiritual paths. We might not understand how the other one does it, but we appreciate that they do.

Occasionally we have intense debates about spirituality vs science. Both of us end up learning something from it. In general though we let each other have our own gods. This suits me fine. I have always felt that spirituality is a personal relationship you have with yourself and whatever universal consciousness or spiritual path you choose as your own. There have been relationships of mine where the other person got immeshed in my spirituality or mine in theirs or both, and it seems like in those sorts of situations things can get messy very quickly. Sometimes people start to create myths around the other person, believing them to be more than human, and although in theory it's lovely to believe that your lover is a deity, in practice you find you're always disappointed when you figure out they're just a human being like you.

I love my scientist. He keeps me grounded. I never have to question whether he's working a magic spell on me or if he meditated more than me this week. When I have a nightmare he wakes me up and he says "there there... it's just a dream" and I can trust him because he doesn't believe that nightmares can come true. When he's away from me the spirits bother me while I sleep, but when he's here his wall of disbelief creates a lovely little bubble around me. He's got his math and I have my math and never the twain shall meet.