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     Good ole UTEP is not where my love of philosophy started.  However, ever since my days there, I have come to appreciate all that Philosophy has to offer.  In this respect, it was a start... of a long journey.

     Once, long ago, in a city far, far away, I joined a class to help out a good friend.  So began my fall from grace.  I bit ever so nimbly from the philosophical apple, and I couldn't turn back.  Nor did I want to. I craved more. What can I say? The apple was green. And I love those sour apples...
     In an age where computers were just becoming a major phenomenon, I was required to sign on to this little library computer, hook up to some big server somewhere out there, and place at least one intelligible (haha) comment about the topic of the week online.  Before I even knew what a bulletin board was, I was performing my first social philosophical commentary on one.  Simple inquiries evolved into an unstoppable juggernaut.  I became addicted, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Mua haha ha haa...
     Where before I wandered alone, drearily lost in my own thoughts, I now found a way to give my musings a voice.  Sparked by the innocent effort to help a friend, I created a monster with a voracious appetite for anything philosophical (not unlike the Cookie Monster).  Philosophy became the banner under which my thoughts could come to congeal, merging many of the things that I liked about history and politics without the incessant memorization or corruption of either.
     It is philosophy which has helped me to uncover much of the truth about myself which I was discovering well before I ever knew what philosophy was.  It is philosophy which has consumed so much of me that I now dedicate this very web page to that very ideal in order to devour more of my soul.  If Dante could see me now.

    But UTEP is not where it started.  Perhaps my parents are to blame.

    In the days of a bygone era, imagine a mother who talked simplistic truths throughout your growing years.  As the yesteryears drifted away, imagine a father whose learned philosophies can barely be recalled, but whose aftershocks carry the very things to make thoughts tremor.  As they can't be from your mother, you are all too glad and proud to attribute them to him.
    I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in a loving household with two wholesome parents.  In such a traditional homestead, one can easily derive the psychological effects that could have led me to be instilled with the love of philosophy which I hold today.  However, where home could most definitely be considered a breeding ground, I don't think that home is where it started either.
    There are some things which my parents never taught me.  These are the things which I learned on my own.  More importantly, these are the things which I learned to love on my own at a very early age.  It is my love of these things which I simply cannot attribute to them.  For example, I can recall when I first laid eyes upon Rodin's infamous piece called "The Thinker."  I can barely describe, even now, my fascination with the piece.  It spoke volumes to me, and no one ever told me that I had to like it.  I just did.  Oddly enough, I would later come to love Dante, whose works were brought to life by Rodin.  Even later, I would come to hear Descartes famous words.  Immediately, Rodin came to mind.  And there it was.  Just like that, I coupled two stray thoughts into one and I've done nothing but ever since.

    Yet, try as I might, I still can't say where that initial love came from. When true passions grip your psyche, can anyone really blame the complex combinations of environmental stimuli by which we are incessantly pounded throughout our growing years? Or does the answer lie deeper within our very souls?

    At such an early age, I could not begin to fathom what those feelings were.  And now that I'm old enough to be able to do so, I can't seem to remember them enough to fathom exactly where they came from.  Such is the curse of knowledge.
    From Rodin to Descartes, it came seemingly out of nowhere.  No one told me to like them.  I just did.  I can honestly say that I loved them from the first moment I knew them.  And though Descartes would probably kill me for this, perhaps I was born with it.  Perhaps that is where it started.  Over the years, I could have been exposed to the right stimuli in just the right way to awaken the love within.  But that love would remain pent up within, speechless and mute, until a chance encounter would coalesce into a meme of thougtful force leading here, to this site, to this place in cyberspace, as if by destiny.  Perhaps this is the way I learned to love philosophy.  Perhaps this is the way we all learn to love anything.

    Or, perhaps not.

    In truth, I don't know.  I don't know where it all started.  But what I do know is that I am here.  I am now.  I think, therefore, I am. Cogito ergo sum.