Yeah well, you guessed it correctly: I started doing work for uni and I feel as though something smashed into my head. I just finished reading a 16-page-long excerpt from Plato’s Collected Dialogues and as I was reading it most of it made perfect sense and I actually found myself exclaiming, man alive, these guys sure know their shit! And they do.

I, however – let’s just say, I couldn’t for the life of me reproduce what I just read, I couldn’t possibly tell you. And here’s why.

When I first came to Kentucky everybody loved me right away; they welcomed me, they cheered me on, they came to me for help, we were a family right away. At first glance that may not seem to explain why I have trouble figuring out what the hell Socrates and Euthyphro are yammering on about in Plato’s likely to be very thoughtful collection – but just go along with it.

I wasn’t used to this because back home I only had a handful of friends (if there were even that many!), and in Germany it isn’t quite as common to tell people you love them every chance you get. The fact that I wasn’t Miss Popular all throughout high school never bothered me directly but it kept other kids from wanting to be friends with me. They saw that I wasn’t part of a huge group and thus decided that I must not be a very enjoyable companion. And while that may be true, I always hated the fact that they based their actions solely on what they saw others do.

People in Kentucky didn’t do it that way. They loved unconditionally from the very start based on what they found out about me day to day. They liked who I was and still am, and loved that person.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be, right? Love people for who they are and don’t be prejudiced.

Or as Socrates puts it: It is not because a thing is loved that they who love it love it, but it is loved because they love it.

Yeah, I know, that’s exactly what I thought. You may wanna read that again and then six times over because before that, just trust me on this, it won’t start making sense. You think you get it and then you read it again and it’s all like, DUDE. THIS IS LIKE THE TIME WHEN THAT GUY PUT THAT FUNNY PILL IN MY GIN MARTINI AND EVERY TIME I PUT MY KEYS IN MY PURSE THEY FELL TO THE CEILING.

Since we’re talking about love, let me just state how much I love Euthyphro’s reply to that statement by Socrates. Here’s what he said: Necessarily.

Listen here Euthy, what’s with being all dismissive? What do you mean, necessarily? Are you implying that what your homeboy Socrates just said is a natural conclusion which any person in their right mind would word in the same way?

And after 16 endless pages of philosophical discussion of the deepest and most confusing kind, when your buddy asked you to explain to him the essence of holiness? Did you really answer, another time, for I am in a hurry, and must be off this minute?

You gotta stop taking those funny pills, man.