I met a girl.

A girl who all at once never knew the condition of love, but loved everything and everyone unconditionally.

I met a girl, a beautiful flower who wished to bloom full, but was constantly cut down by a cruel world.

I met a girl who, in the grandest sense of the term, knew what love was supposed to be but not what it felt like. That is the harshest existence, one I wasn't going to let rue the day any longer.

So, I made a choice, to attempt the right thing, what my heart told me I should do instead of my brain over-thinking every minuscule detail, or my gut being wishy-washy and saying to listen to my brain more. I chose to give a chance to a flower in need of blooming.

Was it the correct choice? Not sure. Will I regret it? Nope.

"And all for love, and nothing for reward."

I got a fortune cookie with that scrawled on a scrap of paper inside one time. I've kept the little fortune because it rings true just about everywhere I look, in everything I see and do. Looking at life not in a vacuum, but on the grandest of perspectives as presented in the show "Cosmos," "… it underscores the responsibility we have to deal more kindly with one another, and to cherish and preserve the Pale Blue Dot, the only home we've ever known." (Sagan)

That big-scale thinking, that we're teeny tiny little gatherings of "star stuff" on a small speck of dust floating in an almost-immeasurably huge universe -- maybe one of several -- is what leads me to this phrase: "and all for love, and nothing for reward." It reminds me to not get hung up on problems, to not hold grudges, and to not carry the negative with you on your back all day. Because, as organisms, we will eventually perish. We will die. We all do, it's just a fact.

I'm not saying we should ignore or forget to pursue virtues of which we're all bound together. On the contrary! We should fully endeavor to pursue anything we bloody well feel like, so long as it harms none. We should endeavor to love, we should strive to live and not just exist.

Rocks only exist, yet are weathered by nature and persevere through time.

Humans are meant to live, yet are weathered by nature and have an intangible deadline to face in the end. That doesn't mean we should fret. It means, at least from my eyes, to skip another stone across the pond while we've still got use of our limbs. Reach out to somebody before they disappear. Make them feel like they matter.

I met a girl in my life's adventures who loved unconditionally, yet never knew what it felt like to be truly loved herself. I can't ever feel the same as she, but I can attempt. It's a scary thing, to plunge that deeply into an abyss… or, as Neitszche would say, to have the abyss stare back at you.

What does it look like? What does it say?

It looks like what you would expect a lifetime of mental torture to look like: a skinny hot mess of quiet sensibilities and infectious laughter. It takes the shape of a particular girl, never to be duplicated in a lifetime.

It is a flower, unique and intricate. A flower ravaged by harsh conditions and nobody to water it, tend to its roots, pluck the dead leaves or refresh the soil under it. A skilled gardener is what it needs.

I am just an average greenthumb in that regard. But that's not going to stop me from doing the right thing and giving a flower a second chance to bloom.

That's all we should strive for in this life. Not cars or homes or cash or sex or power lust… but to cultivate a love, and watch it grow. That's power in the rawest.

I met a girl who, all at once, loved the world with open arms as she was sliced to emotional bits by the sword-wielding villain which can be adulthood. She would bleed, eventually form a new callous, and keep on going.

I stayed by her side one week as she was ill in many ways. It helped me realize how fragile everything is, how imperfections are what drive our love. Were there other people at fault for this girl's trauma? Yes, but I'm not going to hunt them down and make them pay. Karma will take care of them. I am only concerned with making sure she blooms.

Some might ask, "isn't this a foolish undertaking?" To which I reply, "nothing done for the sake of adding a touch of love to this cold universe is foolish."

… and nothing for reward.

I met a girl called love. And love smiled.