At times, we have to just wait for the day when we’ll see the fruit

By David McElroy · September 16, 2018

Sometimes your heart just knows things. Have you ever known from the beginning that you were going to love someone? Have you ever believed — without evidence — that a relationship would be forever?

I’m fascinated by stories of love at first sight, partly because I’ve experienced it myself and partly because such stories validate my need to believe that love can conquer unexpected obstacles.

Sunday evening, a Reddit user going by the name rhysoneill posted this photo and his story.

“The first time I visited my girlfiend (now wife) in college I bought a peach tree from a local nursery and told her, ‘Someday we will eat peaches from it years from now, because we will still be together,’” he wrote. “Well, it worked better than I planned. Here is our son eating a peach from that very tree.”

Six years ago, I wrote about one of my favorite examples of love at first sight. The story is told in detail on an episode of This American Life. At a convention center, there were two conventions going on. John Perry Barlow was a computer nerd at a convention for NeXT software developers. Cynthia Horner was a sophisticated psychiatrist at a medical convention.

Barlow tells the story of seeing Horner for the first time — and knowing that he was seeing someone he somehow already knew. To hear their story, go to this link and scroll down to Act Three — “When Worlds Collide”— to listen.

I’ve related before how I once saw a photo of a woman and experienced the oddest sensation of knowing her deeply, even though I knew absolutely nothing about her. It wasn’t just about her looks or anything like that. It was some odd intuition — some gut feeling — and I remember saying out loud, “I’m going to marry that woman.”

It wasn’t a prediction. It wasn’t a wish. Something in my mind was simply stating what calmly seemed like something I already knew.

Have I married her? No, but I did fall in love with her. How did something in my gut know I would care about her — and want her in this way — with absolutely no evidence? I have no idea. I just know it was very real.

There are times our gut feelings are wrong. There are times when we’re disappointed. But there are also times when something inside you whispers, “This is right,” and it knows what it’s talking about.

Sometimes we need to trust that voice. Sometimes it’s smarter than our minds are.

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I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

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