How I Got It Wrong
Little kids have best friends and they get mad when their best friends play with other kids. Because they think
they belong to each other.
But people don't belong to each other that way; they have to choose each other every day. Even when people get married
and even when they're super-conservatives who think they're going to hell if they ever get divorced, they still have to make
the same decision every day that they're going to stay together, just like everyone else does.
When I was very young it seemed like all the Christian stuff I read didn't at all prepare me for reality: It just
seemed to take this approach that because you're a Christian with all the bells and whistles, then there are certain things
that you never had to worry about. Like divorce. If you just do what God wants you to do, you won't ever get divorced. Ta
dah! And it wasn't like they whispered about divorce as if it was a taboo subject: It was ok to talk about, because it
only happened to other people.
Kind of like talking about Mad Cow Disease. You know it's out there, and it's
a bad thing and there may be some people who have it, but it doesn't really affect you. These are the folks who say that divorce
has gotten too easy, and they don't believe in divorce anyway and so they stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la
la la" real loud when the subject comes up, but even if everything they say is true and they believe whatever they want, the
fact is that folks get divorced every day.
How Everyone Gets It Wrong
I think the problem folks have is when they start to believe that they do belong to each other. Or I should say, when
they believe that other people belong to them, because I don't think that anyone honestly believes that they belong to someone
else. Unless maybe they're into those domination fetish things with all the chains and stuff.
Not that I am.
At all.
Seriously.
It happens in romantic relationships most of all. It's why folks get jealous: I mean, they get jealous mostly because
they're insecure and they know on some level that anyone at any time could choose to leave them, but the biggest reason folks
get jealous is because they think they have a right to.
But it's also why we act like such assholes to our significant others, because we think we can get away with it
and there's nothing he or she can do about it, because they belong to us.
Or like I get invited to this party and there's all these single women there. The dude who invited me swears that it
wasn't set up that way, but I'm telling you, going to that party I felt like LeVar Burton in the first 20 minutes of
Roots, where all the slavers roped him and put him up for auction. Except of course that someone actually bought LeVar Burton.
But this is exactly why people approach relationships that way. Because there really is no security in believing that
someone will choose to be with you every day for the rest of your life forever and ever; there is a measure of security in
owning someone and having them own you. Because then there is no choice, no risk, no fear.
Like when I used to watch I Love Lucy or something, there might be an episode where some singer at the club
is flirting with Ricky, and Lucy believes that he's cheating on her or whatever, so she and Ethel come up with a wacky scheme
to catch him in the act. (Note: Probably Ricky finds out about it and he acts like he really is having
an affair just to piss Lucy off, which is sufficiently wacky but irrelevant to my point here). The point is that you
know Ricky isn't cheating. He can't cheat, because sitcom characters don't have affairs. And this is how we all expect real
life to be, and might even go years and years believing that it really is.
But it's not.
Dating & Karma & Why
There Is No Justice In The Universe
The reason I say any of this is really not to talk about divorce or marriage or even best friends in kindergarten. I
was really thinking about being single and how single people try to meet each other. It's almost like auditioning. Or maybe
like a puppy in a store window hoping he'll be the next one picked.
I didn't like the pressure and the disappointment and the feeling that I didn't measure up. I didn't like hearing how
other people had all these dates and that seemed so casual and effortless and normal. How like in the divorce groups they
always warn you not to just start dating right away, like it was just exactly that easy to meet someone and ask them out.
And I actually went out a couple times, or tried to....and even though I never got far along into any relationship or
anything, I did manage to get just far enough along to remember what a pain in the ass they are, and how you have to worry
about what someone else is thinking all of a sudden.
One good thing about the Buddhists is that their whole religion seems built up around this attitude that they just don't
give a shit. It's like "Whatever". You know, bad things happen, good things happen, just go along. And every so often someone
asks me if the Buddhists have texts like how Christians have the Bible, and the truth is that yeah there are thousands of
them, but really I don't know why. You could pretty much sum it all up with just "Whatever".
And so I try to take a Buddhist approach to it and not care. And as soon as I accepted that I was just never going to
date again and didn't give a shit one way or the other....that's when women started asking me out.
Not that I haven't had fun. I have. It's just that I'm happy being single and living the life I'm living, and it seems
like the universe is conspiring to just give me the opposite of whatever I ask for. I don't know about this karma stuff.
