The General Rules #6 - Timing Isn't Everything

Yes folks, here is another installment of the General Rules. These posts are about the dating and relationship world, of which I am the uncrowned king. Indeed, my vast pool of knowledge knows no bounds. At any moment in a conversation I will nonchalantly spout some unmatched wisdom about an everlasting dating principle. When this occurs, it is the job of my polo instructor, Stewart, to write down my pontification. The following comes from one such account:

Timing isn't everything. There are literally hundreds of factors that come into play when considering why one should or should not begin or continue to date someone. Timing makes up just a small part of all these factors. This list of factors is a little bit shorter than my arm. (Because I am king, no factor is beyond my reach.) I'd like to list several of the most important factors and ruminate on a few. We'll only scratch the surface of these factors simply for brevity's sake:

1. Chemistry. This might seem like a cop-out because this factor is a broad label for an extremely nuanced subject. I'm not talking about physical chemistry, that comes later. I'm talking about the unspoken chemistry. The straws you grasp at when telling friends how it feels to be around that person. The feelings and impulses that lie just out of the realm of comprehension. These feelings are like repelling magnets, for every step you take in trying to quantify why you may feel a certain way, they push a little bit further away. Trying to describe why you feel a certain way about someone and why is like trying to see an atom with your naked eye. It is there, you know it is. You can feel it. But no matter how hard or how long you stare, you will be no closer to the truth than when you started. But how you feel is so important when making a choice because these feelings are always right, even though they sometimes defy logic.

2. Ideals. Similar world views and standards contribute to feelings of similarity and closeness.

3. Humor. This is the cherry on top of chemistry; the fun in funfetti.

4. Similar socioeconomic status. Women need support. And whether or not they are willing to admit it, they will often choose a boy with more money or money potential over a boy with more chemistry, simply because their instinct tells them that he can provide for offspring.

5. Physical Attraction. This is a more influential factor for men than for women. Men are visually stimulated and  will often choose a more attractive girl over one less attractive, even if the chemistry is stronger with the latter. I don't know why this is. Social conditioning maybe. But perhaps it is because we know our offspring have a better chance of replicating if they are better looking. Or perhaps we are just horny and know we won't have the desire to reproduce with a less attractive female.

Again, these are very broad and do not begin to cover all the bases of dating factors. But even if all these factors are apparent in a relationship or potential relationship, the relationship will still sometimes fail. Even if a couple is attracted (and attractive), even if they feel all those unspoken twitterpations, even if they are in love, even if they have the same ideals and religion, even if they are hilarious together, even if they are both wealthy or both poor, relationships still fail. People still break up. Couples are still torn apart. Men and women still stay up nights thinking and sorrowing. Boys and girls still weep. And the lonely still fight constant battles against despair in the confines of the heart. This is because timing isn't everything. It is the only thing.

[Keep Following, my loyal subjects.]

The General Rules #2 - The Necessity of "The Game" (Part 1)

"Could I trust you with my heart if I was sure you wouldn't break it?" (Yes, I just quoted myself).

This is a touchy subject and I am quite positive that I won't handle it as delicately as most of you would prefer. I also want to re-emphasize rule #1 when I started this segment. There are exceptions. Some of us know people who fell in love at first sight in High School and have been together ever since. This is not that story. This is what happens to the rest of us.

I start by quoting a sage Professor Young of BYU, "Our hopes are not always fulfilled. That, we have been told, is the nature of our existence here. And though good things can happen to us, though peace and joy are assured us according to our faith, the good things must often come through a process of struggle and disappointment and patient waiting." I'd like to take this idea a step further, and suggest that, "struggle, disappointment and patient waiting" are essential to the process of finding "true love."

We all have the same story somewhere in our early childhood. For me it was a CD player. For others it may have been a bike or a video game or a Barbie. I wanted a CD player when I was 12. It was a Philips 45 second anti-skip jogproof CD player and it was $25. It was this one:

Beautiful isn't it? But the problem with being 12 is that you have no money. Or job by which one may ascertain said funds. So I saved. I begged. I mowed lawns. I did extra chores. And slowly but surely I saved enough and the day came when I triumphantly marched into Target and bought my prize. I took amazing care of this thing. I kept it clean, avoided dropping it, and never went jogging with it. And it rewarded me with TEN years of faithful service before being irrevocably replaced by my iPod. (Which is still running strong after almost six years.) The point of this story is that I worked for this CD player. I put sweat and long hours of waiting and daydreaming into earning this CD player. I treasured it because I earned it. And it rewarded me by going the distance.

Most of us also have a sad story that runs in an opposite vein to the story above. It goes something like this: we asked our parents for something and they got it right away for us, and we played with it for a total of twenty-four hours before the infatuation rubbed off and it sat in a box somewhere for years only to be sold for 120% off at a garage sale. Horrible isn't it?

Before I get into the meat of this post, I'd like you all to remember that old cliche that reminds us, "We all want what we can't have."

 Like my CD player, boys and girls will obsess about each other. We will wait for months or maybe years harboring a small, flickering hope that that special someone will eventually want, need, or even notice us. We all have that hopeless crush. That original person that never knew we existed. Oh Megan, how your flaxen locks will forever haunt me. Ironically, the thing that keeps this perversely ridiculous hope alive is the fact that it will never be fulfilled. Read that last line again. I'm proud of it. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why can't we be happy with what is given to us? Why can't we be satisfied with the toy our parents bought us on a whim? Why can't we be satisfied with a "game-free", simple, no-nonsense, straightforward, forthcoming, easy relationship?

The answer is pride. We simply view ourselves and our worth as humans kind of like a university is rated by how many applicants it turns away. There is something grossly satisfying about turning away applicants for our love and affection. It makes us feel wanted. Important. Worth more than we actually are. From this elevated self-view we draw our lacking self-esteem. No one, I repeat no one, wants to be easy. We want to be more complicated than we are. We want to feel as though we are the best around. In love we do not want to be cheap recipients. Nor do we want to earn the love of someone else at no cost. For, in either situation, we feel like less than we are worth. No one wants the cheaply attained gift. We want the challenge. We live for the challenge. When all is said and done and love is deemed mutual, neither party wishes to look back upon the road leading to this junction and think, "My, that was easy!" because this would inevitably lead into thoughts of, "Why did I end up with this person no one else wanted? What is wrong here?" And like many things, at that point we will create the evidence to support the belief. We will start making things up in our minds to get out.

To avoid this thought process, "The Game" was invented. Its very name is laughably ironic. Because the nature of a game usually includes fun. And this Game is only fun if you are winning. And I will tell you right now, in this specific game, there are very few winners. Though the Game is hard and confusing and at times wrenches on our heartstrings. It is a necessary evil. For it alone will help us look back upon our road and be able to say, "I did it. I did it when no one else could. I am in love with a person who is in love with me alone. And while everyone else wanted what we have, only I got it. Now I can trust this person with my heart. Because I know for a fact that they can break it."

[Keep following parts 2 and 3 are coming soon to an internet near you.]

Also Old (But Applicable). I'm Too Exhausted To Be Creative.

I've always thought the verb “to pine” was an interesting phrase. The dictionary defines it as, “to yearn deeply; suffer with longing; long painfully.” Not often does one find a word that can be an inanimate object when used as a noun and mean something completely opposite when used as a verb. What does pain have to do with a coniferous tree?

Well, let’s look at the definitions more carefully: “To long painfully.” I guess trees are pretty long. That doesn’t connect unless the length described here does not refer to distance at all, but to time. Pine trees are evergreens. Forever green. Fitting, because when one pines for something or someone, it isn’t usually a short-term thing. Maybe the word suggests a pain and suffering that is continuous, just like the needles that tenaciously hold their color. Stagnant. Ever-green. Like a wellspring of hurt.

The word can also mean “to fail gradually in health or vitality from grief, regret, or longing.” This also seems to be a contradiction. Other trees look sickly and dead in the winter, whereas evergreens do not. Sometimes they seem like the only thing alive in winter. It turns out that that is also false. Evergreens are just as sickly in the winter as other trees, they just don’t show it. Photosynthesis stops almost completely but not altogether. They respirate and have just the right porous surface on their needles so as not to lose too much water. They survive, but barely. So I guess it’s just a façade. A dodge or hustle to throw off those who would put pines in the same class as ruddy aspen or cowardly oak.

Archaic: “to suffer grief or regret over.” What does a tree have in common with this definition? Does a tree regret? Is the mighty pine an optimist? Or a procrastinator? Maybe lingering green is not just resiliency but simple foolhardiness. Could these trees not just send their water and nutrient stores down into dark roots like other trees? Why so stubborn? Why waste the energy to keep creating food when the sky has clouded over? Maybe the needles that rescue its color in the winter suffocate the tree in the summer. Maybe it regrets this; not growing more in the summer and so forces itself to survive in winter. The green is more a funeral shroud of grief and regret than an indicator of life. A sign of a fool’s hope.

Before 900 AD in Middle English the word meant, “pinen: to torture, torment, inflict pain, be in pain.” This green is self-deprecating, a funeral dirge for hopeless optimism. An insidious form of self-torture. Certainly pines cannot be used for torture! you say? Unless the wood is fashioned into a cross, bored into to form a stocks, or cut down to erect a gallows. The needles even inflict pain. Some say to protect themselves. I say it’s to torture those who don’t understand the pine’s message.

Pining may be fitting indeed.

[Keep following cuz it's gettin' started in ha. In here!]

Masquerading on. And on.

What a difference a day makes. I think Annie was right. No matter what happens in our today, tomorrow still has an imagination. And it's better than yours. Way better.

Life tends to be a smug masquerade. We are all dancers on it's floor. We wear our ornate costumes, drape ourselves in exotic fabrics, and elegantly spin as if nothing were amiss. We have our masks; our self-deceptions, pride, and narrow pessimism. As if no new dawn could lavish hope.

Little do we know that around each spinning step slinks an opportunist fate. A met glance. Another chance. Or the audacity of romance. We simple fools. We dance on. Side-stepping our mistress luck for the gatekeeper solitude. We cloud our eyes with ethereal fantasy and drift past waiting out our lives as if it were some one-time-only movie showing.

The sun will come out tomorrow. Though you can't fathom its glory. The while we study the barbican moon. The haunches of its dimness. Shortchange those we love and whittle away the minutes. There is contentment but not joy. We experience a sort of damning lack of progress with contentment. We would have joy but for sadness. Fear whips us into hovels.

I for one am in a beaming moment. Warm-faced and blissful. Spirits akin to longing, now embrace like long-parted friends. Keep me loving and I get away from the dance and tear off my mask; and live.

[Keep following children. Happy days are upon us if you look hard enough. Who knows? Maybe you will wake up 50 years from now to a sterile gray dawn and short days filled with ashen snow.]

A Fair Warning

This is a bathroom story. I had to pee. It happens sometimes. This time it happened at work. I walked in and saw this old guy standing at the middle of the three urinals, in clear violation of proper urinal etiquette. Rather than opting to wait, I just went to the closest to the door. So I done did ma' business, and was zipping up when said old guy (STILL at the urinal) turned to me and said, "Be grateful for your young days. A steady stream and strong flow doesn't last long." To which I replied chuckling, "Thanks. I'll remember that."

And I will. I was grateful for that small reminder that the clock is always ticking. I've been in a contemplative mood all day since then. I was walking up my stairs on my way home from a vigorous run (partly still motivated from the bathroom incident) and I was remembering, not thinking, I miss my freshman year in college. Things were fun then. After having that thought I had to laugh at myself because I didn't think things were all that grand when I was in the moment Freshman year. In reality, a lot of really crappy things happened freshman year. The funny thing about time passing is that it automatically and simultaneously also applies a rose-tinting. We forget pain. We forget heartbreak. We forget stress. We don't forget happy moments. I think the function of this paradox is to try and remind us that we are in "the good ol' days" right now. Today. If we keep in mind that we will look back with longing on days like today 20 years from now, we will live differently.

None of this makes problems go away or pain any less real. But maybe we can react differently and perhaps even preemptively apply that rose-tinting. This is advice so often heard and repeated that it is much worse than cliche. It is also that way for a reason. Every one of us needs this lesson. We all should keep in mind that "a steady stream and a strong flow doesn't last forever." I am grateful for a normal sized prostate.

[Keep following. I know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.]

Practice makes...

I had a moment of clarity the other night. (I've been going for drives a lot lately -- mostly because Miles is in Australia.) I was thinking of a mind set that many of us who have been on missions know about. Maybe I'm generalizing too much, but I'm usually right anyway so it doesn't matter.

On a mission it becomes necessary to create a buffer between yourself and your message and/or your method of delivery. Many of us were encouraged to do this with words like, "Remember, they aren't rejecting you, they are rejecting God's message." There is nothing wrong with this. It's good advice for anyone who didn't want to go insane or spiral into depression. There is nothing wrong with it because it is a true statement. When people said no, it wasn't usually because they disliked us as people. They just didn't want to listen to us. And that was OK. In other words, we just couldn't take the rejection personally.

My realization came the other day when I realized that this is one thing that none of us should ever have brought home with us from our missions. It is something that clings to us like a TB exposure or tapeworm. They told us to make our missions springboards for the rest of our lives. This is also good advice. We should all keep the work ethic, dedication, and determination we learned throughout our lives. But one thing we should have left with our ragged suits and tattered shoes in the mission field, was the idea that people are only rejecting an aspect of you when they reject you post-mission. Yes, I'm talking about girls now.

In my naive way I thought that missionary work would somehow also apply to the realm of dating. (Ha ha.) I thought, "I'm used to rejection. It happened to me everyday. Dating will be easy." It has taken me a year to realize that everything I learned for two years doesn't apply here. I was rudely awakened the first time rejection came. Something was different. It hurt more. No matter how much I told myself that it was the same, it just wasn't. "I must be doing something wrong. I'll won't do this or that next time. I'm still adjusting," I thought. So I did it. I asked for advice, experimented, and yes, even read a book on the subject. And at each small rejection, I changed. Because they weren't rejecting me, they were rejecting my message, an aspect of me.

Don't get me wrong. I was not getting dumped and humiliated and snubbed every Friday night like the word rejection implies. It was in little ways. Just starting up a conversation that would end up going nowhere, and so on. You get what I'm saying. Anyway, my revelation was that this is personal now. I'm not presenting someone with a message anymore. I'm presenting myself. And this whole time, this whole last year, I've been presenting only aspects of me. The parts of me that I think people will like and admire and accept. My realization was that this has been a safety blanket. If I get dismissed, I can chalk it up to being the fault of my technique, or a part of myself that wasn't as likable as I had previously thought. I've really let no one see everything, for fear that they would find something they might not like. I guess that is what people mean when they say just be yourself.

In losing yourself for the sake of love or getting to know someone, you gain nothing. You can separate aspects of yourself from who you truly are, and present that to someone. It works. I've been doing it. And if you are rejected it doesn't hurt because, "hey, it wasn't really me they were rejecting." You can make that separation, but that isn't you. Contrary to modern attitudes, you shouldn't have to give everything up for love. You don't have to sacrifice your identity to show your love for someone. That only hurts. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to constantly strive to be better. You can always be better. But you don't have to give up what defines you to accomplish it. It all comes back to being honest. Not just with other people, but with yourself. That is all.

[Keep following. You may get to know me yet. Like the one time I got crocodile wrestling lessons from Steve Erwin.]