"My end of the break up had nothing to do with me not liking you, or me not being able to connect with you, or us being two different people." He looked down and his windpipe clogged. "It had to do with me not deserving you." He searched for words to describe what he meant to say. "You were too good - too ideal. I couldn't find anything about you that I didn't like." His eyes looked back into hers. "Nobody deserves that, not me anyways." Now you sound pathetic, he thought.
"The respect that people have towards me matters very much to me. However, the respect that someone has for me means nothing if they have no respect for themselves. It's like comparing zero to infinity. One doesn't matter without the other. And you were the first girl that I met that had enough self-respect, that I felt afraid to ever find out what kind of respect you would have towards me. What if you discovered that I am a worthless sack of shit, that I hide behind this mirage of success? I could never live with that - I would die to have to admit that to myself." He leaned back, surrendered.
"Do you know why people treasure the Mona Lisa so much? Why it is worth so much?" She replied, "Because it's a masterpeice made by one of the greatest artists of all time." "No," he replied, "that's the most common error in art analysis." He continued to search for words. "The first correction is to not analyze the title or the artist. Who cares if his name is da Vinci? How would it be any different if his name were Tim the Bouncer? It wouldn't. The Mona Lisa is valued by on-lookers, either consciously or subconsciously, because it reminds them what a human being feels like when it sees true beauty in what can seem often as a melancholy, monotonous procession of time. When we trully recognize the unmistakeable beauty that completes our imperfection - that make our flaws not matter, even if it is for a split second."
"The only problem is that people become so obsessed with the titles, and forget to see the actual beauty and fail to feel for it. That class of unmistakeable beauty lies in people like you. Truly beautiful." She didn't seem to think he was a weirdo just yet. "And what connection do I have to a painting that sits in a museum 8,000 miles away, that was created by some guy hundreds of years ago. Minimal." He hadn't broken eye contact yet, "Here I am, sitting at this coffee shop, chatting with a peice of art, a true masterpeice, derivative of 3 billion years of evolution, adaptation, genetic mutation, and parenting that happened to bump into me at a bookstore downtown. The Mona Lisa is but a first-grade, crayon drawing compared to you. So, why would I be off thinking about the Mona Lisa, when I have a perfectly good opportunity to sit here and look at you? I'll tell you why: I don't deserve it." He quietly stood up and walked away.
"Why do I run?" he says. "A human being runs for two reasons," he continues, "He is either chasing something, or he is running away from something." He pauses. "But, running is just a variation of moving. Running is moving quickly enough to be in a rush." He shifts his weight in the chair. "Everybody moves - is moved - moves others. Again, this movement - all movement - is driven towards some attractive, promising...something, or is pushed away by something repulsive." His eyes darted toward the ceiling. "Hope causes you to chase, and fear causes you to run away." He looked me straight in the eyes. "I have hope, I chase. Hope sets you free, while fear enslaves you - puts you in chains. I win. You just can't achieve anything worthwhile under fear. You are limited by what you fear. To win, you can't fear - not even fear what you could lose." He leaned forward in the chair. "Are we done? I have a race to train for."