"Crappy Sex"

So I've been recently catching up on episodes of Bones thanks to Best Buy selling the first 3 seasons for $19.99. In Season three there's this episode called "Death in the Saddle" where this guy, Mr. Ed - who has a fetish for parading around like a pony, eating like a pony, and being whipped - is killed. At the end, when the whole murder is solved, the criminal arrested, there's FBI special agent Seeley Booth and Dr. Temperance Brennan once again in their favorite diner, reflecting on what just happened. Booth is frustrated at how useless the pony fetish is, and what they're trying to accomplish...

Booth: Just so they could have crappy sex

Brennan: How do you know it’s crappy?

Booth: It’s gotta be, Bones

Brennan: Why? 

Booth: Why? I’ll tell you why. Here we are, all of us basically alone, separate creatures, just circling each other, all searching for the slightest hint of a real connection. Some look in the wrong places, some they give up hope because in their mind they’re thinking: "Oh, there’s just nobody out there for me." But all of us keep on trying over and over again. Why? Because every once in a while, every once in a while, two people met and there’s that spark. And, yes Bones he’s handsome and she’s beautiful and maybe that’s all they see at first. But making love? Making love … that’s when two people become one.

Brennan: It’s scientifically impossible for two objects to occupy the same space

Booth: Yeah, but what’s important is we try. And when we do it right … we get close. 

Brennan: To what? Breaking the law of physics

Booth: Yeah, Bones. A miracle. 

Booth: Those people, role playing fetishes, and their sex games. It’s crappy sex. Compared to the real thing.

Brennan: You’re right.

Booth: Yeah but - wait a second - I just won that argument?

Brennan: Yeah.

So... crappy sex, huh? You remember Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs from Psych 101? I think, spiritually speaking, there is a similar hierarchy of needs - and one that falls in line with what Booth was talking about. I think for myself there's this descending list where if I cannot get, achieve, know, feel whatever it is at the top of the list, I'll keep on going down the list till I can get whatever it is I can get... A list might look something like:

1. God intimacy (I guess you could call it spiritual intimacy/harmony)
2. relational intimacy (I suppose romantic in nature)
3. sex
4. hobbies (sports, video games, whatever)
5. list goes on

Though things on the list are fine in and of themselves, I think their ability to satisfy and fill inner longings of what we really desire, I don't think they can do that. I like what David Wilcox says when he wrote Eye of the Hurricane, a song about what "keeps [him] from joy; addiction." The lyrics go:

She told me once it's quite a ride
It's shaped so there's this place inside
Where if you're moving, you can hide
Safe within the rain

{Refrain}
She wants to run away
But there's no where that she can go
Nowhere the pain won't come again
But she can hide
Hide in the pouring rain
She rides the eye of a Hurricane

Tell the truth, explain to me
How you got this need for speed
She laughed and said
"It might just be the next best thing to love"

Hope is gone, and she confessed
That when you lay your dream to rest
You can get what's second best
But it's hard to get enough

I think that's the gist of it all. You can get what's second best, but you really never do get enough. Maybe somewhere along the way you settle. You keep settling, and before you know it  you've settled for so long and for so much that the thing which satisfied, or had the hint of satisfaction, it's become such a foreign anomaly you forget what it was to begin with. "Rubbish," you think, that was a child's tale. Simplistic "young love" or naiveté - I think that's what some would label it. But everything seems so empty, so stale, so formulaic; at least, that's the place you end up when you keep settling. 

So whether you walk with God, or if you're just walking beside someone else holding hands, I think you really have to take into account the things in your own heart as you deal with this other person, deity or not. Yes, busyness does indeed makes the days pass with a flurry, but busyness can also keep one from the proverbial smelling of the flowers, and from appreciating what is from what is not.

Stop giving up.