Think about when you first meet a person. You have to get pass all the superficial nonsense, the appraisals of accents and checked jackets. An interrogation of appearance. After you have deemed each other worthy, then you can actually settle down to get acquainted, to begin those first tentative probes of the mind. Find out what sort of things fuels the other—what makes them scream, what makes them laugh, what makes them tremble on the rug. You and I are lucky. We never had to worry about the first part, the visual sizing up. We got to go directly to the interesting bit. The getting to know the depths and breadths of each other’s soul. I do not know about you, but I find it refreshing. I am sick to death of having to worry whether people think I look old enough or respectable enough or whatnot. When I write to you, I do not have to think about any of that nonsense. I do not have to worry about my big feet. I can peel away the husk (if you will forgive a corn metaphor) and reveal the shiny kernels of my dreams and passions and fears. They are your, yours to gnaw on as you will. Marvelous with a sprinkle of salt. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 9

Christ represents the alpha and omega not only of human society but all of creation. Thinking of God matters little, if he not be loved in contemplation. When the ancients described an event or action as necessary, they simply meant that it was unavoidable, and when they described it as impossible, they meant that it was not within the power of the agent to bring it about. The World is the only possible World, and nothing in it could be different from what it is. It is nevertheless good, and so the aim of a wise individual should simply be to find and accept one’s place in it. Before creatures are produced, they pre-exist in God’s mind as archetypal ideas. Humans seek perfection and happiness in all that one does. With this tendency alone, we love God only because he is our greatest good and man’s perfected self (albeit perfected by union with God in knowledge and love) and that is the supreme object of man’s affection; what is loved for its own sake and for that sake all else is loved is noble and an inclination or affection for justice (affection justitiae). Love inclines one to do justice to the objective goodness, the intrinsic value of a thing regardless of whether it happens to be a good for oneself or not. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 9

This affection for justice inclines one to lobe a thing primarily for its own sake (its absolute worth) rather than for what it does or can do for one (its relative value). Hence, it leads one to love God in himself as the most perfect and adorable of objects, irrespective of the fact that he happens to love us in return or that such a love for God produces supreme delight or happiness in man as its concomitant effect. The affection for justice enables one to love his neighbor literally as himself (where each individual is of equal objective value). This love is not jealous of the beloved but seeks to make the beloved loved and appreciated by others. Whoever loves perfectly, desires co-lovers for the beloved. Recall the tendency to make others admire the beautiful or the sorrow felt when something perfectly lovely is unloved, desecrated, or destroyed. If the affectio commodi tends to utter selfishness as a limiting case, the first checkrein on its headlong self-seeking is affectio justitiae. This affection for what is just is the first tempering influence on the affection for what is our advantage. I suppose that a sharp mind can be wielded like any sharp weapon, and I am quite disapproving of the snobbery that I find at many of the social function we are forced to. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 9

And inasmuch as our will need not actually seek that towards which the latter affection inclines us, nor need we seek it above all else, this affection for what is just, I say, is that liberty which is native or innate in the will, since it provides the first tempering influence on our affection for what s our own advantage. When it comes to love, I have learned that free will is not simply tan intellective appetite, a motor power or drive guided by intelligence rather than mere sense perception. Freedom of will is not a simple logical consequence of intelligence but is unique among the agencies found in nature. Since what perfects a thing is a form of love, we could say that all activity is parked by love. The peculiarity of such love, however, is that it can never be truly altruistic or even objective. It is radically self-centered in the sense that nature seeks primarily and above all else its own welfare. If at times we find what appears to be altruistic behavior, it is always a case of where the nature or species is favored at the cost of the individual. However, nature either in its individual concretization or as a self-perpetuating species, must of necessity and in all that it does seek its own perfection. This is its supreme value, and the ultimate goal of its loves. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 9

Such a theory presents a dual difficulty for a Christian. How can one maintain that God is love and how can man love God above all things is self-perfection is his supreme value? Well, by making God the perfection of man. In loving God as one’s supreme value, man is really loving himself. Love of friendship becomes possible to the extent that he loves another as an “other self.” Man’s love life is complex. It views everything as something delightful, useful, or a good for oneself and leads to the love of desire (velle concupiscentiae). A free or rational (inn accord with right reason), the will is the seat of the affection for justice that inclines us to love each thing honestly or as a bonum honestum, that is, for what it is in itself and for its own sake. I am someone to desire me and it is not my goal to chase after anyone. If you cannot see that benefit of me, then there is someone else who can. Since only such love recognizes the supreme value and dignity of a person and finds its highest and most characteristic expression when directed toward another, it is usually called the love of friendship (velle amicitiae) or of wishing one well (amor benevolentiae). #RyanPhillippe 5 of 9

I remember one Summer I met someone that seemed so unhappy, depressed and hostile. So I spent the entire Summer writing this individual love letters saying how great this person was, and I really did not expect anything in return. I would even send this traumatized soul beautiful pictures as a way to help heal. Although, I wanted this person to return my affections, I knew that it may not be the case. Nonetheless, the letters were posted on a website, but directed to a particular individual. As the person I was focusing on, in the past, had been trapped in a relationship, I was hoping that may someone would see these kind words I was sending out and seek me and return kind platitudes to me.  Surely, someone was curious to see who was at the other end of that pen-and-paper. I consider myself a scientist and artist, realist and dreamer. Curiosity is my middle name. Remember how in school, when people would have a crush on someone, they would send that person nice letters, candy, and invite them out on dates and it eventually won the person’s heart over? Well, that is what I was trying to do. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 9

Be still my beating heart! Could it be true? Someone would cross the brave ocean for me? I wanted myself a sweetheart, a demure young individual who would also write the most saccharine verse. Very polite, but quite flirtatious. We would spend half of our time discussing the weather and the price of tea in a precise, clipped accent, and the other half trying to get alone in the many corners of my vast house. No matter how much the rest of my anatomy was telling me otherwise, my head cooled long enough for me to decide not to pop the question just yet, asking someone out of a date is a big deal. I was heading back to the States to start medical school and a savings account. In the meantime, I hoped (although not too ardently!) that the object of my affection or someone just as charming would develop at least one other skill or passion aside from trying to maneuver me into the bedroom at every opportunity. I was not holding my breath, but I wanted someone who would be faithful. The cities we visited were lovely, but, truth to tell, I could have been back in Urbana and would have been fine, as long as I was with the person I had my heart set on. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 9

Do my wishes sound overly sentimental? I love writing poetry (is everyone a poet these days?). Even as beauty of body is an harmonious blend of all that become a body so far as size, color, figure and so on are concerned, so the goodness of a moral act is a combination of all that is becoming to it according to right reason (ibid). One must consider not only the nature of the action itself but also all the circumstances, including the purpose of its performance. Walking, running, and the like may be done awkwardly or with a certain grace or beauty. Like bodily beauty, this accidental quality is a melodious of all that becomes the thing in question. Actions also can have such a natural goodness, not just kind words. Right reasons tells us there is one action that can never be inordinate or unbecoming under any set of circumstances: the love of God for his own sake. God is to be loved is the first moral principle or ethical norm. This and its converse, God must never be hated or dishonored, as two obligations from which God himself can never grant dispensation. He is the one absolute intrinsic value, which cannot be loved to excess; but anything other than God is good because Gods wills it and not in reverse order. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 9

The cause of divine intellect denotes the intelligibility of a creature depends upon God’s knowing it, and not the other way around. So too its actual value or goodness depends upon God’s loving it with a creative love. God is like the master craftsman. For all his artistic liberty, he cannot turn out a product that is badly done. Yet no particular creation is so perfect, beautiful, or good that God might not have produced another that is also good; neither must all evil or ugliness be absent, particularly where this stems from a creature’s misuse of his freedom. Nevertheless, there are limits to which God’s providence can allow evil to enter the picture. He may permit suffering and injustice so that mankind may learn the consequences of its misbehavior and through a collective sense of responsibility may right its social wrongs. It is important to know that some actions are good or bad only because God forbids them, whereas he enjoins or prohibits other actions because they are naturally good or bad, that is, they are consonant or in conflict with man’s nature in the sense that they tend to perfect it or do violence to it. The supreme value of love and friendship, which directed God, makes men truly wise. Now after all we have been through, you must tell me your new secret. I can promise that I will not laugh.  #RyanPhillippe 9 of 9