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There's this woman I know who I see frequently during the course of my life. She's really awesome. I wouldn't say that
she's my ideally perfect woman or that she's everything I ever wanted, but she's sweet and she's pretty and she's really easy
to talk to. So easy, in fact, that I wind up spilling my guts about deeply personal things that I never talk to anyone
about. It's weird. It's like getting peoople to open up to her is her mutant super-power. I bet she would be really good at
interrogating terrorist suspects, and wouldn't need to do anything other than just sitting down with them and asking about
their old girlfriends or how they get along with their mom, or oh, yeah, have you ever smuggled weapons-grade plutonium into
Syria?
Anyway, we've talked a couple times recently, and after we go our separate ways I just kind of sit there, smiling, thinking
about the stuff that we talked about and I start to feel this weird feeling in my stomach and in my chest, and I think about
cookies and puppies and rainbows. And for a while, things look better and I'm a bit more optmistic. I wanted to make up a
word for it, but, having talked to my friend Jonathan about it, we've decided that there already is one, and it's just called
"happy".
I'm not jealous of her boyfriend or wishing that I could date her, and I don't pine for her or dream about her. In other
words, I'm not 12 years old. But I just feel happy talking to her, and it had been so long since I had felt that way that
I actually forgot what to call it.
I've been on lots of dates, but when you go through the formality of "dating" someone, there's a certain protocol you
follow, a certain rigidness about the whole process, and it's there no matter how casually you claim to be taking it. It's
like you're sizing each other up and looking for strengths and weaknesses, each trying to put their own best foot forward
and hide the faults and weaknesses. It's like you're an actor auditioning for a role. In my case, it's like being one of those
gorillas who knows sign language auditioning with the nude scene from Hair.
I know there are folks who just want to be married, but it just seems so desperate to be out there "looking for your
soul-mate". It's almost like seeing a starving person going through a trashcan, what looks appetizing to them is much, much
different than what a normal, well-fed person would accept. And you certainly wouldn't trust that starving homeless dude to
make the best nutritional choices, or to know what's best for him.
What does it even mean to find your soul-mate? Why do you have to be soul-mates? It sounds like some 70's R&B thing...Soul
Train, Soul Food, Soul Mates...Why can't you just be two people who choose to stay together, every day, every hour, instead
of people who were bonded with cosmic super-glue before the universe was formed...?
The thing is, it seems like being someone's soul-mate would be a very easy thing to do, and would require very little
effort. If I'm your soul-mate, I can pretty much do whatever I want, and what can you do about it? Leave? Find someone else?
Where would you go? Who would you meet? Whoever it is, and wherever you meet them, they won't be your soul-mate. How do I
know that? Because you already have a soul-mate.
Unless you can have more than one soul-mate, but if that's the case, then the whole concept means nothing. Anyone can
be your soul-mate.
I think when people talk about "sou-mates" what they really want is someone they won't have to work with. Someone they
will always want the same things as, a relationship that requires no effort and no work. I know I don't believe in that.
At any rate, I know that saying that this woman makes me happy just by talking to me makes it sounds like I'm in
love or something, but it's not that. It's just nice to feel happy without having to worry about all that other stuff.
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