Seeing possibilities everywhere can feel like seeing stars
As with any talent or ability bestowed upon us, it takes time and dedication to hone these skills before they can truly add any real value to our lives and the world. For the amateur visionary, the power to imagine alternate possibilities everywhere feels much more a burden than a gift.
Before I learnt that impulses could be managed and even ignored, I would get very easily excited and distracted by ideas, things, and people around me. Staying focused on any one project for too long was a real test and I was constantly dropping them whenever a new possibility caught my eye as it crept onto the horizon.
This gave rise to my preoccupation with figuring out my motivations behind all of my actions. I didn’t have the option to stop being a person who sees every opportunity, but I did have the option to stop being a person who seizes every opportunity. With time and energy being finite resources as my main constrain, I thought about what I wanted the end to look like so that I could filter out the less relevant stuff and prioritize going for the gold.
With my whims locked down, then came the awkward part of learning my value and evaluating the cards I had been dealt. As someone in the habit of maximizing every situation, who sees the goodness (keyword: possibilities) in being handed a chocolate cake as well as in having to bake the damn thing from scratch, I’ve never been very particular about how it happened, so long as there was a chocolate cake at the end of the day.
But here’s the straightest dose of truth you’ll ever get in this lifetime, so hold tight: there are some occasions, though few and far between, where you actually deserve to win a chocolate cake. In fact, sometimes you deserve to lounge in sexy lingerie and lick chocolate fudge off a really hot dude’s six-pack with servants fanning palm leaves by your bedside.
I’m going to elaborate on this in the context of dating because I think it’s something very relatable. Having spent an embarrassing number of years foolishly making huge sacrifices for the sake of deeply flawed and undeserving individuals, I am one hundo percent committed to steering you away from that dark destiny.
Although there are some people who set their sights way too high and expect way too much from their partners, that’s not all of us. I think a lot of us are the kind of people who settle for whatever we get and then call it magical. At some point – sooner rather than later – it’s going to be very useful knowing if you fall into the former or latter category. Are you someone who is too picky? Or are you someone who takes what is given, puts it on a fucking pedestal and then worships it for way longer than is necessary or sane?
To figure this out: take a good look at all the guys you’ve ever brought home to dinner. Did your family and friends think they were amazing, or did they ask you, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WITH THIS SCHMUCK? Do you sometimes find yourself warming up to a dude who looks like he has the potential to adore you forever and ever, because maybe he’s not quite as cute or as witty as you are, and even after all of that settling – surprise! – he was just not that into you anyway? But by then, you’d already made him out to be a knight in shining armour in your mind, so you didn’t want to lose him?
It’s crucial to know if you’re someone who is stubborn and delusional and great at making a delicious chocolate cake from a crappy situation. Skills like compromising and making the most out of what’s in front of you are going to serve you well for the most part – especially in marriage. But they’re generally going to screw your life up in the meantime. Trust me. I say this as a person who has managed to stay in a relationship with someone who was cheating on me repeatedly and then be the one who got dumped and then still feel heartbroken for several years after the ordeal.
More often than not, I’m guilty of actively constructing the person I’m dating – in my head – rather than actually getting to know the person sitting across me. Instead of objectively assessing him against a checklist, I entertain endless possibilities while ignoring the qualities that don’t quite sit so well with me, and sometimes even, I dunno, rewrite his personality in entirety to omit the glaring red flags. And then throw involuntary feelings into the mix, why don’t we? Chemistry, attraction, and rapport quickly annihilate the scorecard and make the process of eliminating subpar dudes who aren’t good fertility matches more perplexing than it really is.
Now, I know this is a bit controversial, but to avoid falling into this trap while navigating the landmine that is modern romance, I’m a late adopter but big advocate of casual dating in bulk. I still maintain that I’m a monogamous relationship type of person. But think that at this present moment, it would be foolhardy to jump into such an arrangement without first conducting surveys of what’s available on the market to ensure that my benchmarks are realistic and on par with the global standard.
The more you expose yourself to what’s out there, the more perspective you gain about your place in this world, the more you understand what you deserve, the more you recognize what getting the short end of the stick looks like, the more you are able to discern when you should be given chocolate cake and when you should be baking. Bla bla bla, at this point I’m just trying to reassure myself that my recent promiscuity has a higher purpose other than lots of amazing sex. So, please, make like the little sisters I have always assumed you to be and tell me that there is.
Pray tell.
Before I learnt that impulses could be managed and even ignored, I would get very easily excited and distracted by ideas, things, and people around me. Staying focused on any one project for too long was a real test and I was constantly dropping them whenever a new possibility caught my eye as it crept onto the horizon.
This gave rise to my preoccupation with figuring out my motivations behind all of my actions. I didn’t have the option to stop being a person who sees every opportunity, but I did have the option to stop being a person who seizes every opportunity. With time and energy being finite resources as my main constrain, I thought about what I wanted the end to look like so that I could filter out the less relevant stuff and prioritize going for the gold.
With my whims locked down, then came the awkward part of learning my value and evaluating the cards I had been dealt. As someone in the habit of maximizing every situation, who sees the goodness (keyword: possibilities) in being handed a chocolate cake as well as in having to bake the damn thing from scratch, I’ve never been very particular about how it happened, so long as there was a chocolate cake at the end of the day.
But here’s the straightest dose of truth you’ll ever get in this lifetime, so hold tight: there are some occasions, though few and far between, where you actually deserve to win a chocolate cake. In fact, sometimes you deserve to lounge in sexy lingerie and lick chocolate fudge off a really hot dude’s six-pack with servants fanning palm leaves by your bedside.
I’m going to elaborate on this in the context of dating because I think it’s something very relatable. Having spent an embarrassing number of years foolishly making huge sacrifices for the sake of deeply flawed and undeserving individuals, I am one hundo percent committed to steering you away from that dark destiny.
Although there are some people who set their sights way too high and expect way too much from their partners, that’s not all of us. I think a lot of us are the kind of people who settle for whatever we get and then call it magical. At some point – sooner rather than later – it’s going to be very useful knowing if you fall into the former or latter category. Are you someone who is too picky? Or are you someone who takes what is given, puts it on a fucking pedestal and then worships it for way longer than is necessary or sane?
To figure this out: take a good look at all the guys you’ve ever brought home to dinner. Did your family and friends think they were amazing, or did they ask you, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WITH THIS SCHMUCK? Do you sometimes find yourself warming up to a dude who looks like he has the potential to adore you forever and ever, because maybe he’s not quite as cute or as witty as you are, and even after all of that settling – surprise! – he was just not that into you anyway? But by then, you’d already made him out to be a knight in shining armour in your mind, so you didn’t want to lose him?
It’s crucial to know if you’re someone who is stubborn and delusional and great at making a delicious chocolate cake from a crappy situation. Skills like compromising and making the most out of what’s in front of you are going to serve you well for the most part – especially in marriage. But they’re generally going to screw your life up in the meantime. Trust me. I say this as a person who has managed to stay in a relationship with someone who was cheating on me repeatedly and then be the one who got dumped and then still feel heartbroken for several years after the ordeal.
More often than not, I’m guilty of actively constructing the person I’m dating – in my head – rather than actually getting to know the person sitting across me. Instead of objectively assessing him against a checklist, I entertain endless possibilities while ignoring the qualities that don’t quite sit so well with me, and sometimes even, I dunno, rewrite his personality in entirety to omit the glaring red flags. And then throw involuntary feelings into the mix, why don’t we? Chemistry, attraction, and rapport quickly annihilate the scorecard and make the process of eliminating subpar dudes who aren’t good fertility matches more perplexing than it really is.
Now, I know this is a bit controversial, but to avoid falling into this trap while navigating the landmine that is modern romance, I’m a late adopter but big advocate of casual dating in bulk. I still maintain that I’m a monogamous relationship type of person. But think that at this present moment, it would be foolhardy to jump into such an arrangement without first conducting surveys of what’s available on the market to ensure that my benchmarks are realistic and on par with the global standard.
The more you expose yourself to what’s out there, the more perspective you gain about your place in this world, the more you understand what you deserve, the more you recognize what getting the short end of the stick looks like, the more you are able to discern when you should be given chocolate cake and when you should be baking. Bla bla bla, at this point I’m just trying to reassure myself that my recent promiscuity has a higher purpose other than lots of amazing sex. So, please, make like the little sisters I have always assumed you to be and tell me that there is.
Pray tell.
