Just be dumb while you're young. Cuz you can. And cuz it makes mathematical sense.
Hello again. Did you miss me?
Rhetorical question.
I’ve been hit with some cold, hard truths in the last couple of months and as patron saint of disillusioned and neurotic weirdos everywhere, it only feels right that they are shared with the sisterhood of the single. I’m leaving out some of the more obvious lessons here because, like please, just do yourself a favour and ditch anyone who isn’t treating you with 100,000% respect. I sincerely hope some of these small but significant lessons I’ve had to learn the hard (ha ha, pun!) way, which I will try to bequeath to you over the coming weeks/months – depending on my commitment to typing on the keyboard – can lighten your load and help ease some of those dating woes.
But first, I'd like to address something that's been grinding my gears. After subjecting an unsuspecting friend to yet another one of my longwinded rants when yet another man had driven me into the pit of despair – this happens every other day – the advice doled out was that "perhaps if this doesn't work out, you could actually try not to always be on the look out for something? I dunno. Just be. Instead of always actively meeting new guys even if it's to just hang. Just be. Things could still happen in ordinary situations."
I would take a (metaphorical) bullet for this girl, but I swear 2 G. "Just be." LOL. Whut? (I love you, Bel. I do.)
We’re told to adopt a go-getter attitude in order to get what we want from life, but ironically encouraged to stay uneducated and let romance be our guide when it comes to our love life. Is it just me or do we value people who take initiative and put in hard work to succeed in life, but prefer to leave things up to chance and/or divine intervention and/or magic when it comes to love?
This approach bewilders me because even when I use the rational side of my brain to do the math, the number of years we stick with our spouse comes up to be much longer than those we spend at our jobs. Please suspend all opinions on divorce because “till death do us part.” And I mean, “it’s a known fact that lobsters fall in love and mate for life. You can actually see old lobster couples walking around their tank, holding claws.” #fact #Buffay
If I – hypothetically speaking, of course – charted out a detailed plan of action to find a life partner, logged my progress, and organized data about my dates in a spreadsheet – which I most definitely do not do because I have zero knowledge of working Excel, ok?????? – by society’s standards, I’m A) an over-rational robot, B) desperate, C) way too concerned about this, and D) a huge weirdo.
Then comes the stigma associated with intelligently expanding our search for potential partners. Or, simply expanding our search because sometimes it’s more fun to do things unintelligently, such as loitering around bars and creating an OkCupid profile.
In a study on what governs our dating choices more, our preferences or current opportunities, opportunities wins hands down – our dating choices are “98% a response to market conditions and just 2% immutable desires.” This implies that our intentions to date tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, brunette, European, Asian, professional, clerical, educated, uneducated people are largely determined by what’s on offer that fateful night.
Despite such compelling evidence, most of us still believe that the respectable way to meet our life partner is by sheer dumb luck, at work, bumping into them randomly in the cheese section of the supermarket, or being introduced to them from within our little pool. If like me, all your friends are girls because you went to a single-sex convent school for most of your life, you prefer not to shit where you eat and work in an industry dominated by women and gays anyway, your mom picks up the groceries so you rarely have to spend more than 5 minutes at the supermarket, you’ve already dated your schoolmate’s brother, your neighbour, and your best friend’s boyfriends’s best friend, U R FCKD.
That’s not to say I think chasing your dream job is the same as chasing your dream life partner is the same as a dog chasing its tail. Oh, wait – it is. That’s exactly what I’m saying. #pointless. No, of course not. All I’m saying – or rather, all I’m asking – is that why are so many of us so ready to just go with the flow, comfortable with relying on fate, and crossing our fingers while hoping for the best when we are capable beings who can totally and SHOULD TOTALLY play an active role in all aspects of our own lives? Whether it's about an ice-cream cone, a career opportunity, a prospective life partner, next season's hottest handbag...
I dunno. I kinda like getting exactly what I want.
And going after what I want seems to exponentially increase the likelihood of me actually getting what I want. As compared to “just being,” which I’m not entirely sure encompasses what specifically. Even when I fall short of what I’d set out to achieve, usually the fact that I’d tried gives me repose (and several anecdotes). Conveniently ignoring the fact that I’m a lil restless piece of shit as it works against the argument I’m trying to make right now, all I know is fear keeps us safe. But sometimes it holds us back. To quote a certain Canadian athlete, "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take." So you do the math and work that one out.
Rhetorical question.
I’ve been hit with some cold, hard truths in the last couple of months and as patron saint of disillusioned and neurotic weirdos everywhere, it only feels right that they are shared with the sisterhood of the single. I’m leaving out some of the more obvious lessons here because, like please, just do yourself a favour and ditch anyone who isn’t treating you with 100,000% respect. I sincerely hope some of these small but significant lessons I’ve had to learn the hard (ha ha, pun!) way, which I will try to bequeath to you over the coming weeks/months – depending on my commitment to typing on the keyboard – can lighten your load and help ease some of those dating woes.
But first, I'd like to address something that's been grinding my gears. After subjecting an unsuspecting friend to yet another one of my longwinded rants when yet another man had driven me into the pit of despair – this happens every other day – the advice doled out was that "perhaps if this doesn't work out, you could actually try not to always be on the look out for something? I dunno. Just be. Instead of always actively meeting new guys even if it's to just hang. Just be. Things could still happen in ordinary situations."
I would take a (metaphorical) bullet for this girl, but I swear 2 G. "Just be." LOL. Whut? (I love you, Bel. I do.)
We’re told to adopt a go-getter attitude in order to get what we want from life, but ironically encouraged to stay uneducated and let romance be our guide when it comes to our love life. Is it just me or do we value people who take initiative and put in hard work to succeed in life, but prefer to leave things up to chance and/or divine intervention and/or magic when it comes to love?
This approach bewilders me because even when I use the rational side of my brain to do the math, the number of years we stick with our spouse comes up to be much longer than those we spend at our jobs. Please suspend all opinions on divorce because “till death do us part.” And I mean, “it’s a known fact that lobsters fall in love and mate for life. You can actually see old lobster couples walking around their tank, holding claws.” #fact #Buffay
If I – hypothetically speaking, of course – charted out a detailed plan of action to find a life partner, logged my progress, and organized data about my dates in a spreadsheet – which I most definitely do not do because I have zero knowledge of working Excel, ok?????? – by society’s standards, I’m A) an over-rational robot, B) desperate, C) way too concerned about this, and D) a huge weirdo.
Then comes the stigma associated with intelligently expanding our search for potential partners. Or, simply expanding our search because sometimes it’s more fun to do things unintelligently, such as loitering around bars and creating an OkCupid profile.
In a study on what governs our dating choices more, our preferences or current opportunities, opportunities wins hands down – our dating choices are “98% a response to market conditions and just 2% immutable desires.” This implies that our intentions to date tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, brunette, European, Asian, professional, clerical, educated, uneducated people are largely determined by what’s on offer that fateful night.
Despite such compelling evidence, most of us still believe that the respectable way to meet our life partner is by sheer dumb luck, at work, bumping into them randomly in the cheese section of the supermarket, or being introduced to them from within our little pool. If like me, all your friends are girls because you went to a single-sex convent school for most of your life, you prefer not to shit where you eat and work in an industry dominated by women and gays anyway, your mom picks up the groceries so you rarely have to spend more than 5 minutes at the supermarket, you’ve already dated your schoolmate’s brother, your neighbour, and your best friend’s boyfriends’s best friend, U R FCKD.
That’s not to say I think chasing your dream job is the same as chasing your dream life partner is the same as a dog chasing its tail. Oh, wait – it is. That’s exactly what I’m saying. #pointless. No, of course not. All I’m saying – or rather, all I’m asking – is that why are so many of us so ready to just go with the flow, comfortable with relying on fate, and crossing our fingers while hoping for the best when we are capable beings who can totally and SHOULD TOTALLY play an active role in all aspects of our own lives? Whether it's about an ice-cream cone, a career opportunity, a prospective life partner, next season's hottest handbag...
I dunno. I kinda like getting exactly what I want.
And going after what I want seems to exponentially increase the likelihood of me actually getting what I want. As compared to “just being,” which I’m not entirely sure encompasses what specifically. Even when I fall short of what I’d set out to achieve, usually the fact that I’d tried gives me repose (and several anecdotes). Conveniently ignoring the fact that I’m a lil restless piece of shit as it works against the argument I’m trying to make right now, all I know is fear keeps us safe. But sometimes it holds us back. To quote a certain Canadian athlete, "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take." So you do the math and work that one out.
