This is being written by someone who isn't currently in love (and hasn't been in awhile) so for anyone reading this who is, well you'll probably disagree with what I have to say.
It seems like finding The One is next to impossible these days. If you think about it there are over six billion people on the planet, meaning the chances of finding that perfect soul mate is six billion to one. And that's assuming your field is everyone on the planet. Even if you narrow it down to your own country you've got several hundred million to deal with. Finding true love in India or China must be like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles. Let's say you limit it to just your state or surrounding states. Still looking at a few million people. So you've limited the options to about seven percent of all the potentials. Think of all the people you have ever met in your entire life. Does it add up to over a million people? How many of those did you really get to know? In all likelihood you could have met your soul mate and never even stopped to learn their last name.
So maybe it's more likely that instead of there being The One there is the one for right now. Considering how much we change over the years it's hard to imagine that a single person will grow and change with us in the exact way that keeps them as a constant perfect companion. I'm not saying it's impossible, but people change, sometimes right when you're looking at them. The person that's good for you now may not be right for you in twenty years or even tomorrow. I get the impression that every relationship is the equivalent of a "summer thing", but with varying degrees of length.
Now I'm not opposed to the idea of soul mates because I've met people I've had an instant connection with. It's almost like I recognized them, even though I was meeting them for the first time. For me those connections have been more on a friend level than an intimate one, but I imagine the same basic premise is still there, just heightened. But that's how I felt about the person. I can't know how the person felt about me. Is someone really your soul mate just because you feel they are? How can you quantify someone else's connection towards you? I've known many people who believe with all their heart that someone is meant for them, but it doesn't work out for whatever reason. Does that mean they were wrong about the person being their soul mate or was the other person just not in the know? Which leads to the idea that maybe just because we believe it, doesn't make it so.
Every single relationship in the history of relationships has ended or will end eventually. It's just a matter of time. That may sound cynical, but it's just a fact of life. Even if you manage to find someone to spend the rest of your life with, at some point someone is going to die. Then the relationship is over. In more cases though things end before death. Think about it this way. Even if you're currently in a relationship, every one before it ended. That must mean that even if the people before felt like The One, they must not have been because you're no longer with them. It's been described that a soul mate is your soul's recognition of its counterpoint in another. Well that's great as long as you're in love and like each other. What happens when that person no longer loves you? Do they stop being a soul mate and become a soul nemesis? It's also been said that best friends make the worst enemies. That's especially true with former loves. The passion that was once there can turn in on itself and become loathing. At that point it probably feels like your soul mate is there to torment you until death.
Maybe we have several The Ones throughout our life. When you're 19 you have The One for you then. When you're 26 you may as well be a different person so you get another The One. The person you wanted or needed when you were 19 may look nothing like what you want or need at 26. Who's to say what you'll need in another seven years? I believe that everyone in our lives serves some kind of purpose though. Even if that purpose is to teach us a painful lesson. It makes me wonder what kind of purpose I may serve in other people's lives and what lessons I'm painfully teaching those around me.
To me it seems like people in our lives are somewhat seasonal, for lack of a better term. They come into our lives for a time and then they go. Some last longer than others, but it's just the nature of things for people to drift in and out of each other's lives. Maybe you're with the person who feels like the one. The person you've spent your whole life searching for. If it feels that way, then enjoy it because you never can tell how long something will last. Consider yourself lucky. In a sea of billions you managed to find someone that fits you right now. If you're still looking for that perfect one, you better hope that they're in the seven million people that are surrounding you.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
On Birthdays
Birthdays are a funny thing. They're yearly reminders that no matter what we do in our lives we're constantly growing a little older. Hopefully we're growing a little wiser along the way. For a lot of people birthdays are like annual life checkpoints where you can confirm your progress. Some checkpoints are better than others, but I suppose as long as your checking them off there's always hope that next year will be an improvement.
For awhile in my twenties I didn't really like my birthday all that much. I would get slightly down about how my life wasn't going where I wanted it. The birthday was just a cosmic post-it note that said I hadn't reached where I wanted to go. In actuality birthdays are no more significant than New Year's Day, but we make them important because while they may be some arbitrary date on the calendar, it's our arbitrary date. So I would look at my life on my birthday and say "I'm 25 and I haven't..." What I should have been doing was looking at my life and saying "I'm only 25 and I've done..." That way I could look at what I've done, what I wanted to do, and what I could have done better. Then the next year would be something to look forward to rather than something looked back on with regret.
The strange thing is that while my birthday is important to me, I couldn't tell you what I was doing on the majority of them. In fact I can only clearly remember the last two years, and that's simply because the difference between them was night and day. As a kid I didn't always have birthday parties. They were more like birthday gatherings. I've never had a lot of people that I call friends at any one time and even those that were friends, only a few of them were the kind that I'd want at my birthday. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I had enough friends to have what could be called a party. Even then I can only clearly remember one actual party. That's not to say there weren't others before or after that, I just can't remember them anymore. The years between 17 and 29 are just a blur of memories, which sort of plays like a birthday montage in my head. Actually when my birthday comes to mind several things appear. Green grass, pizza, baseball, moon boots, sex, Star Wars, graduation, friends, and candy cigarettes.
Something I learned awhile back is that birthdays aren't always for you. Often they're for the people in our lives. Hopefully you have someone in your life that likes having you around. A birthday is specific date to celebrate that. If you're like me, you may believe that the celebration should be year long. So even if you're not a fan of your own birthday, someone out there is. Why do you think so many people get cornered at a restaurant while the staff sings Happy Birthday. Often we show our love to others by tormenting them with sappy displays of affection.
Another weird thing about birthdays is that when they happen I don't feel different. It's only been a year so how much could have changed? Maybe not all that much between now and the last one, but the changes are happening when you're not even looking. Look at the person you were ten years ago compared to who you see in the mirror today. That didn't happen over night. With every birthday we are a slightly different person until one day we look back and try to pinpoint when the change happened in the first place.
I've also started looking at who has shared my birthday with me over the years. Some people were there only once or twice, but there were some regulars. In some cases the people who were there one year weren't back the next. Just how life goes during that year long journey around the sun. I also makes me wonder who will be there at my next birthday and who will be absent.
If you think about it your birthday marks when the world changed. Before your birthday happened, life was different, even if you weren't your parents' first child. Now that you're here, it's time to enjoy the fact that every year you get to celebrate your mark on the world, even if the price gets a little higher each time.
For awhile in my twenties I didn't really like my birthday all that much. I would get slightly down about how my life wasn't going where I wanted it. The birthday was just a cosmic post-it note that said I hadn't reached where I wanted to go. In actuality birthdays are no more significant than New Year's Day, but we make them important because while they may be some arbitrary date on the calendar, it's our arbitrary date. So I would look at my life on my birthday and say "I'm 25 and I haven't..." What I should have been doing was looking at my life and saying "I'm only 25 and I've done..." That way I could look at what I've done, what I wanted to do, and what I could have done better. Then the next year would be something to look forward to rather than something looked back on with regret.
The strange thing is that while my birthday is important to me, I couldn't tell you what I was doing on the majority of them. In fact I can only clearly remember the last two years, and that's simply because the difference between them was night and day. As a kid I didn't always have birthday parties. They were more like birthday gatherings. I've never had a lot of people that I call friends at any one time and even those that were friends, only a few of them were the kind that I'd want at my birthday. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I had enough friends to have what could be called a party. Even then I can only clearly remember one actual party. That's not to say there weren't others before or after that, I just can't remember them anymore. The years between 17 and 29 are just a blur of memories, which sort of plays like a birthday montage in my head. Actually when my birthday comes to mind several things appear. Green grass, pizza, baseball, moon boots, sex, Star Wars, graduation, friends, and candy cigarettes.
Something I learned awhile back is that birthdays aren't always for you. Often they're for the people in our lives. Hopefully you have someone in your life that likes having you around. A birthday is specific date to celebrate that. If you're like me, you may believe that the celebration should be year long. So even if you're not a fan of your own birthday, someone out there is. Why do you think so many people get cornered at a restaurant while the staff sings Happy Birthday. Often we show our love to others by tormenting them with sappy displays of affection.
Another weird thing about birthdays is that when they happen I don't feel different. It's only been a year so how much could have changed? Maybe not all that much between now and the last one, but the changes are happening when you're not even looking. Look at the person you were ten years ago compared to who you see in the mirror today. That didn't happen over night. With every birthday we are a slightly different person until one day we look back and try to pinpoint when the change happened in the first place.
I've also started looking at who has shared my birthday with me over the years. Some people were there only once or twice, but there were some regulars. In some cases the people who were there one year weren't back the next. Just how life goes during that year long journey around the sun. I also makes me wonder who will be there at my next birthday and who will be absent.
If you think about it your birthday marks when the world changed. Before your birthday happened, life was different, even if you weren't your parents' first child. Now that you're here, it's time to enjoy the fact that every year you get to celebrate your mark on the world, even if the price gets a little higher each time.
Friday, May 14, 2010
On Control
An animated sheep once said "There are two types of things in this world: Things you can control and things you can't. Why worry about either?" The thing is how much in our world do we really control? Even our own bodies are outside of our control. We may think we're in command, but given the complexity of the human body, there are several mundane tasks going on that we can't do anything about. Do you think you can regulate pancreatic function or how your blood flows? Technically you can't even force yourself to stop breathing for very long. So maybe the inner workings of our bodies is out of our control, but we must be in charge of our own minds. Nope. We don't really have too much impact there either. It's been said that we may not be able to control what others do, but we can control how we react to what they do. That's partially true. For the most part you can exert some form of self-control and not immediately just say whatever comes to mind, like a child. However, our brains are governed by a sea of neurochemicals and having any of them slightly out of balance can cause severe changes to our mood, thoughts, or even personality. We can't even have power over our own reality because neurotransmitters could be misfiring, causing us to believe that we can fly, or that people are after us, or cause us to surge into a rage over a perceived insult. So if you think about it, we're in a body with countless functions occurring every second that we can't really do anything about, and it's all being controlled by a mind that is essentially a chemistry experiment that could easily explode at any moment.
Still we fight for some form of control. When we were children the older we got the more we fought against our parents' control. Toddlers are constantly wanting to do things on their own because for the first time in their lives they have the ability to manage how things go. Teenagers are in that strange limbo of not quite being a child, but not quite being an adult, so they also rebel against everything, even themselves, in an attempt to maintain some kind of control on where their lives are going. Meanwhile parents are waging their own war trying to control their children in a way that boundaries are established and maintained. Then as we get older we find that we once again aren't in command of so many things. The longer we live the less we finally control. You'd think that given time we'd finally get a knack for things, but it just doesn't work out that way.
Even every relationship has some level of control between the people involved, even if it's as minor as maintaining clearly defined roles. I once knew someone who always had to have things their way when it came to other people. They wouldn't answer the phone, only text. They wouldn't talk face to face, instead they would use instant messenger or email. That way the conversation was always controlled. Everything could be read and analyzed or tweaked. I'm sure they were master of the backspace. The problem with that is that they never allowed anyone else to have any kind of control of the conversation. Your option was to either submit to how they wanted it or not have any contact. Given enough time resentment will form because no one likes to have control always taken away from them.
I've known a few people who will not drink to the point of being drunk because they don't like to be out of control. There is an ever-present concern that while under the influence they will do something they may regret later. Maybe that comes from a bad experience or maybe it's just part of their personality that they never want to let go of whatever power they have. Given what I've seen and experienced with alcohol I know that it lowers your ability to regulate yourself, so in a way you're free from who you may normally be. For some people that makes them uncomfortable. For others it becomes an escape that's used all too often because they want to let go.
Maybe the trick to getting by in a world that's essentially chaos you have to accept that your control is limited. That's not to say you aren't responsible. Too often people like to throw their hands in the air and say it's not their fault. It wasn't me. It's my genes that are responsible. While it may seem counterintuitive to what I've been saying this whole time, we are in control, even if only slightly. It's that fraction of power that we call free will. It's what keeps us separate from animals who rely only on instinct. With all that said, take a look at your own life. What do you control? What elements are more than just influenced by your decisions? Maybe influence is enough. Think of how many things in this universe can be drastically altered by just a nudge in one direction or another. It's those small corrections that shape reality. So maybe we are in command of everything and it just feels like we're constantly skidding out of control.
Still we fight for some form of control. When we were children the older we got the more we fought against our parents' control. Toddlers are constantly wanting to do things on their own because for the first time in their lives they have the ability to manage how things go. Teenagers are in that strange limbo of not quite being a child, but not quite being an adult, so they also rebel against everything, even themselves, in an attempt to maintain some kind of control on where their lives are going. Meanwhile parents are waging their own war trying to control their children in a way that boundaries are established and maintained. Then as we get older we find that we once again aren't in command of so many things. The longer we live the less we finally control. You'd think that given time we'd finally get a knack for things, but it just doesn't work out that way.
Even every relationship has some level of control between the people involved, even if it's as minor as maintaining clearly defined roles. I once knew someone who always had to have things their way when it came to other people. They wouldn't answer the phone, only text. They wouldn't talk face to face, instead they would use instant messenger or email. That way the conversation was always controlled. Everything could be read and analyzed or tweaked. I'm sure they were master of the backspace. The problem with that is that they never allowed anyone else to have any kind of control of the conversation. Your option was to either submit to how they wanted it or not have any contact. Given enough time resentment will form because no one likes to have control always taken away from them.
I've known a few people who will not drink to the point of being drunk because they don't like to be out of control. There is an ever-present concern that while under the influence they will do something they may regret later. Maybe that comes from a bad experience or maybe it's just part of their personality that they never want to let go of whatever power they have. Given what I've seen and experienced with alcohol I know that it lowers your ability to regulate yourself, so in a way you're free from who you may normally be. For some people that makes them uncomfortable. For others it becomes an escape that's used all too often because they want to let go.
Maybe the trick to getting by in a world that's essentially chaos you have to accept that your control is limited. That's not to say you aren't responsible. Too often people like to throw their hands in the air and say it's not their fault. It wasn't me. It's my genes that are responsible. While it may seem counterintuitive to what I've been saying this whole time, we are in control, even if only slightly. It's that fraction of power that we call free will. It's what keeps us separate from animals who rely only on instinct. With all that said, take a look at your own life. What do you control? What elements are more than just influenced by your decisions? Maybe influence is enough. Think of how many things in this universe can be drastically altered by just a nudge in one direction or another. It's those small corrections that shape reality. So maybe we are in command of everything and it just feels like we're constantly skidding out of control.
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