Purity

we do not fully know what it means to become human to another

A student called me the other night. He needed help with a paper, but as we talked, it seemed that the task was an excuse, not the real reason, for his call. So I asked a few questions, and we discussed his classes, his family, his friends. Then, abruptly, he asked for advice.

His story is that he made out with his girlfriend’s best friend. She was drunk. He assured me that they did not have sex.

And he is conflicted.

Because of how it felt. Because of what he wants.

He wants to have sex. He also wants to wait until marriage. He wonders if there’s a way around the moral boundaries that up until that night seemed completely reasonable and good.

The nature of desire is multi-layered. And the contemporary struggle for purity involves loneliness and sometimes anguish and sometimes hope. But struggle it is.

For we do not fully know what it means to become human to another.