It is our second overnight stay here in the laboratory. We still haven't got over our exhaustion from the previous overnight with barely 3 hours of sleep to re-energize and plenty of activities in the day to drain it out. We have to force ourselves to come here and leave our cat behind despite the strong urge to rest.
While we are waiting for our samples to dry we are overcome by the feeling of being alone here in a cold, lifeless laboratory. The constant buzzing of the creaky air-conditioning unit seems to remind us of our solitude, like crickets humming in the silence of the night. We tighten our jacket, fold our arms and rested our head on the wall.
Sometimes, we wonder if this feeling is all there is for the rest of our life. It is our honest admission that we have felt alone since we were aware of our existence and we have always been curious about how things might be different if you have someone, who at all circumstances, can make you feel that you are never, never such.
Would life be more enjoyable if we have someone who would be so willing to bring us an umbrella when we're stuck in the rain instead of trembling in the cold while waiting for the rain to stop?
Would life be more worthwhile if we have someone to tell all our troubles to and assure us sweetly and affectionately after running our tears dry, that everything will work out fine?
Or in our case right now, would we be more inspired to finish our work when we have someone to keep us company even through our cellular phones or laptops only, informing that someone about the progress of our experiment instead of tightening our jackets, folding our arms and listening to the sound of silence?
Would life be truly lived if we have someone who would want to do everything for us as much as we desire to do everything for them?
As we stare at the empty beaker reflecting our emaciated face we are reminded of a line from the movie Moulin Rouge:
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."
And yet as we continue to ponder we have realized in introspect that we will forever remain curious about these things. We have long accepted that there are questions we can never answer and events we can only experience if we're in a different, parallel universe. There are people like us who believe so, and our fate is best defined by the words of Harold Zidler from the same movie we quoted above, who told it to the main character, Santine who is terminally-ill:
"We are creatures of the underworld. We can't afford to love."
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