1 OUT OF 5 OF US LOVE SOME ELSE?

Don't know about you, but personally I just love today's tsunami of polls and surveys. They're so much fun to have around. Not always accurate or functional, really, but they make the statisticians happy in their jobs; and they give the rest of us oh so much to argue about at water coolers and over dinners.

Take this latest from OnePoll.com which reports 1 in every 5 adults in Great Britain is in love with someone other than their partner or spouse. Usually it's a co-worker or the spouse of a friend. How perfectly delicious! Never mind the dubious motives for the study, the implied consequences titillate the imagination...excite latent aspirations...conjure up whole movie scenarios featuring you with, say, Tom Cruise or Cameron Diaz.

The somewhat frayed institution of marriage has been going through some rough times lately. Millions don't bother with it...other millions want it to include same-sex couples...still other millions prefer to use it as the classic public camouflage for private dalliances.

However, this pert little survey may open this issue to something even deeper and more innate. Humanity's perennial restlessness with whatever it already has. This relentless appetite for some forbidden fruit that can add hedonic spice to an otherwise bland daily diet.

The central plot to Genesis speaks to this very point. As did Augustine several centuries later when he said: "My God, we are forever restless until we eventually rest in you." In the mouths of a thousand prophets and poets, the message has remained much the same: Humanity is an unsatisfied lot, forever wired for something more.

Until, that is, we somehow come upon it along our journey. As have those who have left trail markers for the rest of us. For some of them, the satisfaction of nature, of love, of children. For others, the gratification of power, celebrity, success. For a sacred few, simply the calm that comes from looking back over the journey believing you traveled the very best routes you could find.

Not likely many surveys will bother tracking these routes. Too bad, though, because we could all use a good compass...