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Tell me, why is it that the greatest of all things, whether it be books, movies, artworks, what ever you wish it to be, is full of two emotions that we all know and yet do not understand in the least? I am talking, of course, of love and the basic human fear of loss. I look at all of these things that I have grown to love, be they favorite books, movies, whatever it may be, and I find something common in them all. Books that you tear up -or even just break down and cry- to when you get to the ending, movies that jerk a gut reaction out of you when a beloved character dies, they are all present. And yet, human beings as a whole are typically prone to avoid these emotions in real life. What is it about these fictional character's lives that absorb us in to such an extent that we feel the emotional pain they experience? What is it about them that causes us to live through their pain and yet shun our own? Has humanity devolved to such an extent that we are unable to live our own lives and must live the lives of beings that do not exist? Looking back into my favorite stories, it is always the same. Watching Star Wars, we feel the pain of Luke Skywalker as he learns the devastating truth of his family life. Is the book The Elfstones of Shanarah, we feel the pain that Wil Ohmsford feels as he watches the Elven girl he traveled with for so long and fell in love with transform into a tree that saves the world from Demons. Why, then, do we delve into these kinds of stories that are filled with pain we may never experience just to get away from our own pain?

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