It’s almost midnight, and for the last thirty minutes I’ve been staring at my laptop trying to figure out what to write. (I got nothing.) Honestly, I’m dog tired. My bed is six feet away, and I’d much rather be over than over here. Indeed, my body is crying out for sleep. This evening I went out for Mexican food with my friend Aaron, and my head almost fell into the cheese dip. That being said, I still had a wonderful time and managed to stay more than alert for the drive home. But seriously, as soon as this blog is over, I’m out like a light.

I guess part of the reason I’m exhausted is because I didn’t get much sleep last night and have been going all day. Plus, I’ve eaten a lot. My insulin is working overtime. This morning I ate at a brunch buffet with friends and had three helpings. You know, to get ready for the Super Bowl, the official favorite holiday of gay men. (That was a joke, Mom. The official favorite holiday of gay men is Halloween. Because we get to pretend like we’re someone we’re not. Ironic, I know. You’d think all those years in the closet would have been enough pretending.) Anyway, after brunch, me and one of my friends ran around to a couple antique shops and one bookstore, where I bought an old book about nautical astronomy (how to navigate ships by the stars) for a dollar.

Something I’ve been thinking about tonight is how every book is a world unto itself. For example, the book I bought today includes charts and tables that if correctly read, understood, and used, would allow one to sail a ship around the globe using only the stars (and sun and moon and horizon, I’m assuming) for guidance. Talk about amazing. I can barely get to an out-of-town shopping mall without a GPS and three Hail Marys. But I digress. My point is that any book, fiction or non-fiction, has the power to open to you new and (hopefully) exciting ways of seeing the world. New ways of understanding. New ways of believing.

Along these lines, lately I’ve been thinking of individuals as books, each with his own way of perceiving, each with her own story to tell. And whereas our lives obviously overlap with the lives of others and we’re written into the chapters of our friends and families, no two books–er, no two lives–are exactly the same. Byron Katie says that each of us lives on a different planet, in a completely different solar system than everybody else. Meaning that in your book, in your world, gay people may be hated by God (or you rather, since we’re talking about the God in YOUR head) and condemned to hell. In mine, not so much. At one point this afternoon my friend’s sibling offered them egg salad, which the sibling obviously loved. “Ick,” my friend said. “I could never.”

See? Two different novels, two different stories. The story of “egg salad is delightful,” the story of “egg salad is shit.”

More and more, it’s becoming important for me to let people have their story and let people have their world. What I mean is that I have less and less interest in trying to change people, in trying to convince anyone that gays and egg salad are fabulous. This afternoon I stood amid thousands of books, and only one of them seemed so interesting that I reached for my wallet. But what? Am I going to insist that the other books be banned? Certainly not. Every book has a right to exist. Likewise, so does every person have a right to exist. Exactly as they are. With all of their experiences, opinions, and judgments. However contrary to mine or yours. This is love. It doesn’t demand that the people around us change one iota. Rather, it appreciates the fact that every book reads differently.