The Subjunctive: Keeping Life in Perspective.

As I spend more and more time absorbing the spanish language here, this oh-so-scarey "bizarro" grammatical entity we call the subjunctive is not such an enemy anymore. Not only am I becomming more intuitive as to know when to use it or not, but I am starting to really like and admire it. It is used to express desires, wants, hopes....things that are not concrete, for sure going to happen. Now though native speakers do not "think" about when to "use" the subjunctive or "not to" I think they may be on to something. As a non-native speaker, when thinking of when I should conjugate this verb differently or wondering why the speaker just used the subjunctive, it keeps life in perspective. If I can differentiate when the subjunctive is appropriate or not, I can also keep in perspective what is reality and what may NOT happen. And if I can anticipate something MAY not happen, even though I HOPE it does, I can prepare myself not be as let down, for example. Or when I am speaking the subjunctive reminds me, just because I want this to happen, doesn't mean it will. It reminds us in general that you can't always get what you want. Life goes on and you gotta roll with the punches. It's a CONSTANT reminder of this simple truth. And when we learn to accept that we cannot control the world, we can adjust to whatever it throws to us better. (And WHEN we learn--subjunctive ;) ) When it became obvious to me how often the subjunctive is used in daily speech, I realized how much of our lives are undetermined thus far. We can work hard and hope...but ultimately we must take what life gives us, adapt and re-adapt. That keeps life exciting! So thank you subjunctive.