308. age as social construct...or not

I’ve never been one to give my age a lot of thought. By that I mean that I’m one who neither looks forward to nor dreads his birthday. I think it’s a fun excuse get together with some friends and throw a party, but that’s about all.

I like to think that age is nothing more than a social construct - that it’s just a number signifying nothing, that all of the benchmarks that we associate with certain ages is just societal expectation that somehow seeps down from the ether of the collective unconscious. It doesn’t really mean anything.

I can’t remember when I started thinking about age this way. Probably sometime in my late twenties. I suppose it was a way for me to justify the fact that at 29 I had nothing resembling a career trajectory. According to my resume, in 2001 I was working part-time at a nightclub running sound. I was also doing temp work at various companies. In theory, my main job during that time was trying to run a recording studio out of the basement of my parent’s house - we had put up new soundproofed walls and I had made some pretty big purchases to make this happen. But the truth is, I was an abysmal business man. I was relatively good at recording bands but I had no idea how to promote my services or how to generate cash-flow.

So maybe that’s why I came up with the idea that age is merely a social construct - because I needed a way to justify my dead-end life at the time. According to what the world was telling me, as a 29er I should have been working at a decent job for a few years - a job that utilized the college education I received, a job that promised promotions or, at the very least, served as a gateway into higher paying jobs.

But that wasn’t where I was at.

But I didn’t feel like a loser even though according to the world’s timeline, that’s kind of what I was - a bum sponging off the parental units.

And so I came up with the idea that age is just a social construct.

I lived with this delusion for quite a long time. I mean, for a while I actually believed it.

In fact, I think it’s only in this past year that I’ve come to see how wrong I was about this.

Let me say that part of the reason I was able to sustain this wrong-headed idea is the fact that I had parents who put next to no pressure on me getting into the workforce in any sustainable way. I mean, every once in a while they would point to openings for state jobs in the paper but I told them that there was no way I was going to work for the man. I didn’t put it that way, of course. Rather, I probably said something like, “I don’t think that’s for me. I have a few leads for bands that want to record - I think the studio is just about to take off if we just give it a bit more time.” Actually, I have no idea what I said to keep my parents at bay. I don’t know how they put up with my lazy ass.

Of course the other luxury that allowed me to dismiss the effects of aging is the fact that I’m a male. On top of that, I’m a male who has no desire to procreate. I mean, of course I want to copulate someday and of course I want to do that properly within the bounds of marriage, I just don’t want to have kids as a result. So as a man who doesn’t want kids, the whole biological clock thing is a non-issue.

And maybe this is a good segue into some of what finally led me to face that fact that age does matter.

It's dawned one me recently that the dating pool for those in my age group is tiny. I suppose part of this has to do with the fact that at my church the single women are primarily younger 20 somethings - most of those who are older are married or engaged or in a LTR.

I think the reason I came to realize this is in part because of the speed dating fundraiser I participated in (and helped plan, I might add) and in part because of how I've been thinking about love lately. And so because of these things, while I'm still mostly content with being single, I have felt a bit more of a longing to find that someone who is...how did I put it once...

Strikingly beautiful, that's the way to describe it - her presence. Not a beauty that wafts at you from across the room like a deep blue perfume, but one that slaps you in the face reminding you that you're alive and in dire need of some aesthetic in your crude singular life.

Ha. Yeah, that's kind of what I've been looking for lately - someone who can bitch slap me out of the comfortable charms of singlehood. And they're out there, at my church in fact - sharp, smart, really beautiful women. And it's not that they're new to the church, it's more that I wasn't looking before...but I notice them now.

But.

But it's in noticing them that I the fact of my age and how it's not merely a social construct has really hit home for me.

There's a formula I learned a few months ago. It's a formula used to determine the lower bound for age-appropriate dating. In other words, it tells me how young of a person I can date without playing the part of cradle robber. The formula goes like this:

Y = (A/2)+7 where A is age and Y is the youngest person that someone aged A can date.

So I'm 36. Plug that into the formula and turns out the youngest person I can reasonably, appropriately date is 25.

Don't ask me where the formula came from or how/why it works, but it does have a kind of logic to it. The older you get, the wider the gap between your age and the youngest person you can date. For example, when you're 22, the youngest person you should date is 18 - a difference of four years. When you're 50, the youngest person you can date is 32 - a difference of 18 years. Which makes sense because the older you get, the less likely you are to exhibit major changes in personality or outlook on life and so hooking up with someone 18 years younger than yourself when you're 50 is not a huge risk because despite the gap, the 36yo is more likely to stay themselves than someone younger. And so the formula seems reasonable to me.

Well, it seemed reasonable to me until I looked around at my church and saw that there weren't very many available women over 25...I mean, they are there (and some of them are wonderful and attractive) but remember that I'm insanely picky when it comes to asking women out - far more picky (see here and here) than I have any right to be, but that's a topic for another post. However, if I forget about this formula, I'd say that there are a couple people I might consider asking out.

Now at this point, some might say that the formula is stupid, that love is love, that age really is a social construct and I should feel free to ask out anyone over the age of consent.

[important side note]

Please don't think that I'm thinking about dating 18 year olds. When I say there are a couple women I'd consider asking out who are outside the range of that formula, I mean they are just outside that range. So put down the phone, no need to call Chris Hansen and report me to Dateline NBC.

[end side note]

But I think that the formula is a good one and I do think that it's a bit odd for a 36 year old to be dating someone under 25. And it's not just the eww factor. A 25 year old is still in that area of life where their character is only beginning to settle and set. Contrast this to the average 36 year old whose personality and character are, for the most part, the way they're going to be. Now, I'm anything but the average 36 year old (I mean I'm the drummer in a rock band for cryin' out loud) and I think my personality and belief systems are still in flux. If age were only a social construct I'd say I'm socially in my late 20's. But I'm not. My birth certificate is not a construct and it tells me that I'm 36 so dating someone under 25 still seems wrong.

And if I can rant and complain a bit, nobody ever told me about how the dating pool shrinks dramatically once you get past 30. I didn't see this coming so I didn't think to get out there and date while the dating was still good. I mean, in the end there's no one to blame but myself. I should have been more aware of where I was in life - I should have seen that opportunities don't wait around forever.

But then again, for most of my twenties and early thirties, I WAS out there looking and trying to date. The problem then was, I was desperate and lonely and somewhat depressed (and women can sense that and it's not attractive). On top of that, I had no game (I was awful at flirting and/or making small talk). And I was still pretty picky even back then. And I was still struggling to unlearn all the bad teaching I got on dating during my early twenties. Add all these factors up and you end up with me the way I am today: if I were any more single I'd disappear.

So here I am. I still don't have game. I'm not desperate or lonely anymore and that helps. I'm a lot more sure of myself and I have a pretty decent job. If I can be so bold, I'm a pretty good catch. I'm pretty sure I'd make a kick ass boyfriend.

But the fish in the sea available to/appropriate for me are few and far between. Factor in my insane pickiness and the odds of me meeting someone are getting mighty long.

But don't cry for me Argentina, the truth is I'm content as a single person.

So in the end, maybe all this thinking about age and dating is all a moot point. Yes the dating pool is shrinking, but I don't mind being single all that much. And that's par for the course.

301. go speed dater, go!

One mention of the word "date" and all my friends back in Hawaii start flipping out. On the MySpace version of my blog, I got a bunch (translation: four) of comments asking about the speed-dating event I mentioned in a previous post. And so partly for them, because they make up the first and often most loyal of my readers, and partly just for myself because it was a fun event that raises some interesting issues for me, I'll restart my writing with this event.

First things first, the event came about because of a brilliant move by my pastor. He started out the year challenging the various Community Groups (aka C-Groups, aka cell group Bible studies) to be a blessing to the neighborhoods where we met or to bless a local charity. But he did more than just issue this challenge. He put money behind it and called it the Good Neighbor Fund. Basically, the church gave every C-Group $200 and instructed them to use this money to bless those around them.

The members of our C-Group put forward some ideas which were voted upon and short story shorter, we chose to use the $200 as seed money to put on a fundraiser. But not just any fundraiser - a speed-dating fundraiser!

I advocated for this option for a variety of reasons. It was meant to be a inter-church speed-dating event and getting the Body of Christ to interact has been a passion of mine for a while now. Also, I liked the fact that instead of just putting the $200 into a smoking BBQ and inviting the neighbors over or donating it straight into a charity, we were investing it, growing it, multiplying it. And of course I thought about the ever-present fact of my singleness and the fact that this event offered me an end run around my normal laziness and lack of assertiveness when it comes to dating.

Maybe it's because I advocated for this idea but somehow I got picked to be a part of the team that would try to put on this event. There were seven of us: the planning team, alternatively referred to as the Cupid Crew or the Hook Up Crew. Despite the enormity of the undertaking, we refused to let the fact that none of us had ever participated in a speed-dating event (never mind trying to plan one) stop us. To make up for this lack of first-hand knowledge, we scoured the internet, we brainstormed like mad, we grilled friends we knew who had done speed-dating before.

I mention this because I want to make it a point to say that the people I worked with to put this event on are some of the sharpest, most dedicated, not afraid to lay down the law people I ever had the pleasure of working with. Seriously, I've been a part of lots of different teams for all kinds of events but the Cupid Crew was by far the most well-oiled, well-rounded (and prettiest...you too Dar) team I've ever been a part of.

But none of this is really what you're interested in is it?

You just want to hear about the speed-dating don't ya?

(If you 're interested in the mechanics of the event, you can read about it on our wiki.)

So I got to meet 15 delightful women in the span of about two hours (more "dates" than I've had in the past five years...damn, that's sad). Each speed date lasted about 3 minutes (it's not called speed-dating for nothing). In the days preceding the event I spent some time thinking about how to best use that 3mins. I thought that I would have to be efficient, that I would have to cut to the chase without scaring the other person off. I had to come up with a question that would tell me a lot about whether I'd want to spend more time with the other person in the minimum amount of time. And this is what I came up with:

"So hypothetically, if someone were to tell you that they wanted to change the world, what would you think about that person or that statement?"

That's it.

I mean, of course I made some small talk, but I always did my best to squeeze this question in somehow. Sometimes rather inelegantly. And the responses were interesting. They ranged from, "that's impossible," to "that's great but [insert various caveats here]," to "I think that's, like, so awesome...puppies and kittens are so cute" (just kidding about that last one, all of the participants were great).

Why'd I choose that question? Well, I don't know if I've ever come right out and said it but I have a secret deep down inside of me. I normally don't talk about this secret for many of the same reasons why asking that hypothetical dating question was an odd choice. But I'm going to share it with you all here and now. Don't tell anyone, okay? I want to change the world - make it a better place, a place more like Eden and less like Babylon. (So I guess in addition to the already long list of things I'm looking for in a life partner - see here and here - I can add "someone who wants to change the world.")

And that's a pretty audacious thing to say, I know (the delusions-of-grandeur response immediately comes to mind), but I believe in it. And I'm going to go for it. Soon. (Yeah, I see you snickering and dissing me but I don't care.) And if I'm going to have a girlfriend who's eventually going to be my wife, she's going to have to be on board for this crazy idea of mine (I don't know how I'm going to change the world yet but I'm working on it). And so asking that question made it easy for me to weed out those who I could see would not be suitable partners in chasing my change-the-world ideas.

Well, maybe it's because of my question, maybe it's because I had something stuck in my teeth, maybe it's because I forgot my mojo at home, but I didn't end up getting any matches from the event. We did find out from the secret match-making team (aka "The Triad," their identities kept hidden to preserve the sanctity of the hooking up process) that everyone (including me) got put on someone's list but not everyone had mutual matches. See what happened at the end of the night was, everyone submitted a list of up to five people who they met that they would be interested in meeting again. The Triad took everyone's list and if two people put the other's name on their list, they would be sent email addresses and the rest was up to them. So in other words, my name appeared on at least one other person's list but I didn't put that person down on mine so no match for me.

Honestly, I was a bit relieved when I got the news that I hadn't been matched. I mean don't get me wrong, I met some really great women but even with the ones whose names I submitted, they weren't really what I was looking for.

Despite not ending up with any dates, on a larger level, the event was a huge success. We ended up getting:

• 92 total applicants


• 30 churches represented among those applicants


• 58 participants in the event itself


• 32 matches made


• and we raised just over $1000 after expenses


• when the idea of the GNF was first presented, the guy who leads our C-group said that if we chose to do any kind of fundraising event, he would match whatever amount we raised. At first he was giddy at the success of our event but when we told him how much we raised, he turned a rather ill shade of green. Maybe we need to do another fundraiser for him.
  
• so if he comes through with his matching promise (and I have no doubt he will, he can handle it) we'll have raised over $2000. Not a bad return on a $200 investment.
  
• funds will be split evenly between two excellent local non-profit organizations.
  

We also ended up getting some really nice compliments from those who participated. And we also heard it through the grapevine that a couple other churches are thinking about holding similar speed-dating fundraisers (as an aside, one of the neat tricks about tucking a speed-dating event inside a fundraiser is that it makes participants more likely to...well...participate because they don't have to feel strange and awkward for signing up for a matchmaking event - they can tell themselves (and other people) they're doing it to raise money for a good cause).

So there it is. The speed-dating event. I have other things I want to say about the state of dating and relationships in my life but that will have to wait for another post (I wanted to keep this one on the positive tip). For those who commented asking about the event, I hope this satiates your voyeuristic curiosity. If not, drop me some questions in the comments section and I'll do my best to respond.

297. cultivating "pearls"

So my pastor has a really cool blog which he calls beauty and depravity. This week, as a kind of joke, he put the following exchange between himself and a Quest single woman (QSW) up on his blog:

QSW: What do you call a cute guy at Quest?

Pastor: Huh? Okay...what?

QSW: A visitor...

Pastor: [laughing] That's cold.

And I thought it was hilarious and so did some other people. But then something interesting happened. In the comments section, his innocent post touched off a flurry of discussion centered loosely around the topic of dating. It didn't take long for another QSW (not the one that told the "cute guy" joke) to put up her own blog entry in response which then got referenced in yet another post back on my pastor's blog which also garnered a ton of comments.

It's been quite an interesting and entertaining couple of days in the Quest blogosphere.

And since the topic is dating and relationships and church...well, of course I have to throw my hat in the ring.

Thing is, most of the comments (left by men and women) basically made the point that men should man up, grow some balls, and start asking out some of the amazing single women who call Quest their church home. And for the most part, they're right.

But.

But for some guys it's not that simple.

Take, oh...let's say, me as an example.

In the last few years of high school and the first few years of college, I was involved in a para-church organization that took a pretty hard line stance when it came to dating. Basically, their message was, "don't date because you can't control your emotions and your hormones. If you start dating now you're inevitably going to do something stupid like having unprotected sex (because we're certainly not going to teach you anything about contraception) and you'll probably get your girlfriend pregnant. You're going to stop going to church and fall away from Christ because you're too busy to go with your two minimum wage jobs (the only jobs you could get because you didn't finish high school/college) and so your kid will grow up outside a nice christian home and he/she will hang out with the wrong crowd and start taking drugs which will lead to him/her stealing items from your home which they will pawn off to support their habit. In the end, you'll die a miserable old man who never got to accomplish anything meaningful in life. All because you started dating before you were old enough to handle it."

You think I'm joking about this? Well, yeah, I'm exaggerating a bit but honestly, not by much. During camps and retreats, they'd often have a segment where they'd separate the guys from the girls and they'd give THE TALK, not entirely unlike what I wrote above. And they did more than talk. If a dating couple made the mistake of attending one of these camps, the counselors would do everything they could think of to try to break them up through the course of the retreat. They'd make sure the one couldn't see the other during free time. At every opportunity, the women counselors would talk to the girl and the male counselors would talk to the guy, explaining in no uncertain terms why they were too young and unprepared to be in a relationship. Their tactics were quite effective. Lots of couples either left halfway through camp, unwilling to put up with the bullying tactics, or left camp no longer dating.

Now you might be thinking, that's so screwed up - why did you put up with that kind of teaching? Why did you stay with that group?

Well, yeah, looking back now I can see how screwed up that all was, but at the time I didn't know any better. I mean I wasn't learning about dating and relationships at home. I love my parents and all but I never saw them modeling any kind of healthy interaction, let alone intimacy (despite the eww factor). And back in the day, I wasn't one of the cool, with-it kids. I was one of the nerds back when being a nerd was still a bad thing. No one in my circle of friends knew anything about how to get dates let alone what to say or do if we somehow went on one. So when I started going to these camps and hanging out with these smart, hip christian leaders who talked about how great their marriages were, why wouldn't I listen to what they had to say?

And here's another thing. Despite the fact that I now see that their views on dating were fracked up (I've been watching BSG oh hulu), they really did have some solid teaching and discipleship. I learned a lot from them and I might not be the christian I am today were it not for some of the values they instilled in me. I mention this because their being on point in most areas of christianity made it that much harder for me to dismiss their take on dating even if it seemed a bit odd to me.

Now at the same time, as I was growing up, men were being mocked and ridiculed on television, in movies, and certainly in the stand-up comedy routines of female comedians. Take a movie like When Harry Met Sally. Billy Crystal's character is basically a jerk. Not just that, he gives Sally (Meg Ryan) multiple lectures on how men are pigs who only have one thing on their mind when they're around women.

Or take a look at this bit from a song by Jimmy Webb titled, What Does A Woman See In A Man which ends with this bit:

And yet, dreaming of orgies in Vegas or Cannes
He preens and strikes poses Olympian
While she shoulders the cross
And lets him play boss
His nurse and long-suffering Samaritan

He brags about knocking the world on its ass
But oh when the shit hits the fan
She'll bail him out
She's the one with the clout
Only she knows how humankind ever began

Tell me what does a woman see in a man?

(complete lyrics here)

The song came out in the early nineties but in its own hyperbolic way, it kind of captures the man-bad-woman-good vibe that kind of emerged out of the eighties.

I'm sure there are much better examples of what I'm trying to get across which is the idea that I grew up in a time when the habits and attitudes of men were belittled in the media. Oh, and I just remembered a quote from a movie called Mindwalk that went something like, "you men have been in charge for so long and look at what a mess you've made of things. Maybe it's time for women to take the lead."

And one last item before I (finally) get to the point I'm trying to get across.

I suppose I just have the worst luck when it comes to women because despite all the dysfunctional instruction I received, I did manage to start sort of seeing this girl while I was in college. And it was stupendous, thrilling, bountiful and beautiful. It's like we were best friends from the start - we had similar interests, we finished each other's sentences. We felt instantly at ease around the other and found ourselves sharing things even our best friends didn't know.

But.

But we were just friends and when I suggested maybe we be a bit more than friends, she freaked out. She said I was betraying our friendship and she couldn't believe I would want to ruin something so special.

Now let me be clear here that it's not like I was suggesting we begin regular make out sessions in the back of my car. All I wanted was for us to see one another more regularly, to not date other people, to be able to tell our friends that we were seeing each other.

But she didn't want it. Any of it.

Don't ask me to explain. Her friends didn't get it either - they thought we would've made a smashing couple. Everyone saw that she and I seeing one another would have been the obvious, perfect thing. Well, everyone but her.

I'll spare you the gory (and I mean Stephen King/Clive Barker/GWAR gory) details but it went from amazingly beautiful to brutal and ugly almost overnight. I was a mess and she started seeing some guy who everyone thought was obviously wrong for her.

I guess this is all a VERY long, cumbersome way to respond to what some people said in the comments section of my pastor's blog posts which was basically, "hey guys, stop being spineless, safe, and weak and start asking girls out!" To which I respond, "it's not that easy for everyone."

I don't know if it was the batty teaching on dating I got from those camps or the fact that my parents didn't model a healthy relationship for me or if it was all the men-are-bad vibe I was getting from the media or if it was the brutal crash and burn of that early almost-relationship with that girl. I suppose it's all of the above, but add it all up and I guess you can see that dating doesn't come easily to me.

The amount I don't know about dating and relationships could fill a black hole and turn it back into a star again.

In the comments section to one of my pastor's posts I asked why women didn't do some of the initiating. One person responded that women do initiate by putting out signals.

Maybe I've never been signaled, maybe I haven't seen the Rosetta Stone and don't know how to interpret their hieroglyphics. Maybe I have so little confidence in the dating process that I refuse to see them. I mean if a woman came up to me with a sign stuck to her forehead that read, "hey, ask me out," I'd probably think she was just being ironic.

See, it's not like there's a school out there offering degrees in Lloyd Dobler. And yeah, there are books out there like Dating For Dummies and The Mack Within and The Game, but they all basically say the same thing which is "be confident - confidence is attractive." And I'm sure that's true but in the rare occasion that I do try and ask someone out, while my mind is telling me, "I'm the man, I'm a great catch, I'm so money I don't even know it," the thing that comes out of my mouth is, "so...um...don't feel pressured or anything because it's not really a big deal so feel free to say no because you won't hurt my feelings and I hope I'm not putting you in an awkward position because...oh, you know what? I just remembered that I need to buy bread so I'll be going now. Have a nice day."

Look, here's the deal. I don't write all of this because I want people to feel sorry for me. On any given day, I'm 99 percent content and happy and secure as a single man. And even on my most needy days, I'd say I'm still up around the 85-90 percentile. For the most part, I like love being single. My life is simple, my money is my own, I don't have to clear my schedule with anyone. I'm not saying my life is all diamonds and pearls but it's like Jay-Z says, "I got 99 problems but a b#$^# ain't one."

I put my story up to make the point that "man up, grow some balls, stop being a wimp" is pretty empty advice.

I don't know how many men can relate to anything I've shared but I'll bet they don't want to talk about it because who wants to admit that they don't have the first idea about how to date - something eighth graders know how to do? Because how much more unattractive will they feel they are to women by making such an admission?

And so I'll speak for them because I have nothing at stake. I love being single.

(Am I missing out on a beautiful part of what it is to be alive and human? Probably. Am I going to do anything about that? Not right now.)

The most sublime description of the modern dating scene that I've ever heard came from one of my college Political Science teachers (Chad Blair) who said, "some people are getting it, some people aren't." And I'd add that those who aren't are either too ashamed to admit they need help or have no idea where to get help even if they wanted it.

I don't know what the solution for this is. I don't know how to make men better, more whole, more confident. But sometimes the suggestion, "be a man," is about as useful as telling a drowning person, "learn how to swim."

284. tell me about love (part 2)

Couple weekends ago I was asked to play drums at my church's morning services (two morning services). During the second service, the band gets together during the sermon (since we've already heard it during the first service) and hangs out so we can get to know one another better or catch up on what's been going on. This week, the worship leader asked an interesting ice-breaker type question. He asked us to share something that no one or very few people knew about us - something we felt comfortable sharing.

I shared that I'd never had a girlfriend but not for lack of trying. When I shared that, I thought it was something only my closest friends knew but after thinking about it later, I realized that I had already shared this fact in my blog (see entry 162). So I guess it wasn't as much of a secret as I thought it was. Maybe I should have shared how I went skinny dipping in the ocean in the first early hours of January 1, 2000 (true story).

I'm not sure how the other members of the worship team took what I shared about being single, but it's funny because later that day while we were packing and cleaning up after church, the worship leader asked me if I'd be willing to go out with someone who was Chinese. In jest, told him I'd go out with anyone with a pulse. The truth of the matter is, the list of things I'm looking for in a significant other is pretty long and esoteric (see blog 62 and 275) but I'm open to the idea that the person I end up with might be someone I never would have expected so consider this an invitation to set me up at will.

All that said, I've also written before about how after years of longing, pining, craving a girlfriend, I've found ample contentment as a single man. And I have. Among other things, I've come to appreciate the freedom being single affords. I can go where I want, when I want. I can eat whatever I want wherever I can get it. And that's one less gift I have to buy this year.

But in the back of my mind, I know I'm missing out.

In my previous post about love, I wrote a bit about 1 Corinthians 13. Paul ends that epistle with this line, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love," (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Honestly? If asked, I suppose I could rattle off a list of ideas that I think describe love but it would be like me describing the surface of the moon - I've seen pictures but I've never really been there.

And I've heard it said that in order to get love you've got to give love. But how do you give something you don't understand? When I heard this idea, I figured the best way to show love would be to give of myself to others - to help in what ever ways I could and I think (at least I like to think) that those who know me will say that I'm someone who will drop what I'm doing at the drop of a hat if I see someone with a need that I can fill.

But what if that's not how love works?

Take a look at this other piece from 1 Corinthians 13 - this time from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase, The Message:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. 1 Corinthians 13:1-7

Ouch.

What if all the generosity I gave that I thought was love was just "the creaking of a rusty gate?"

What if I have no idea what love is?

Because (and maybe this is the secret that few people know about me) I don't think I know what love is.

And that's a pretty screwed up thing to write but there it is.

Well, let me clarify that a bit. Of course there are people in my life who I love - family, the guys in my band, friends back in Hawaii, new friends in Seattle - but even with these people, it's sometimes hard for me to know how to love them. I know I love them, but how so? How do I show it, how do I live that out?

And if I have uncertainties about loving those I love, how am I supposed to love my neighbor or my enemy or Harold?

[insert long pause (say, 20mins) where I'm staring at the screen, wondering if I should write this next bit]

I hesitate to write this because, to me, it sounds terribly self-indulgent and selfish and spoiled but it's where this entry is headed so I may as well just go there.

See. . .

I. . .

I wonder if I'm not sure what love is because I don't think I've felt loved in a really long time.

Is that okay to say?

There's a really popular book which I haven't read but I've heard a lot of people talk about it so I'm vaguely familiar with its concepts. It's called The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. In it, Chapman talks about five "languages" of love - five different ways that people experience and give love. They are:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch.

I don't think I speak any of those languages.

Well, let me qualify that. I think I show love to others though acts of service. But I don't know if that's how I receive love. In fact, looking at Chapman's list, I'm not sure if any of those is how I receive or feel loved.

There are lots of different versions of this Love Languages book. There's a Men's edition, a children's edition, and a teenager's edition. I think I need a geeky introvert edition. I'd feel loved if he wrote that.

I guess I write all of this to make this point. I wonder if the easiest way to learn about how to love and be loved is to, well, be in love - ideally with someone who loves you back. And so I wonder if I need to get over the comfort I've found as a single person and put myself back out there and try and find someone I can grow old with.

I don't know.

So tell me about love.

What's the best way to give and receive love?

What is it about modern society that makes it so hard to express and/or feel loved even as we are supposedly more "connected" through cell phones and email?

Should I get off my lazy, single ass and put myself out there more?

Lastly, I got no game when it comes to dating. Does anybody think reading this book would help me learn some moves?

283. What It's Like to be Shy (fiction)

I was about to start on this week's post when (for some reason...probably to delay the actual work of writing) I took a look at my "secret" blog where I used to post pieces of fiction that I was working on. I haven't put anything up there in months (like since April).

Anyway, I'm looking again at what I had posted there and I came across this little story and I was cracking up because it was so much fun (if I can be so modest). And I thought I'd share it with ya'll.

Just a note, this is FICTION! It might sound like me and while it's loosely based on me, it's not about me (mostly).

Hope you like it.

What It's Like to be Shy

At The Coffee Shop:

I dress anonymously. I avoid color and fashion. Blue jeans and a dark (but not too dark) shirt.

I sit in the corner and face the window. I used to face the wall but one of my friends (one of four) told me it makes me look a bit crazy and kept me from blending in.

I scan the crowd but avoid eye contact. At the window in the front of the shop there is a row of barstools and a counter where patrons rest their lattes while flipping through the local weekly or write on their laptops. Sometimes I'll spot a woman sitting there whose hair style attracts me and I imagine that she has a face with a beauty unique to my quirky aesthetic. Sometimes she turns and shatters the illusion, but more often than not, all I ever get is her ear lobe and the curve of her chin. And that can be enough.

At the Barber Shop:

When I get a trim, I always hope for a stylist who just cuts hair, who doesn't bother with small talk.

I would never say this, because that would be too forward of me, but as I'm sitting in their chair, I always think to myself, "please, please, just cut my hair. Don't ask me how my day has been. Don't ask me what I do for work or for fun. Don't ask me if I've seen any good movies. Don't ask me about the latest reality show."

"Just ask me how I want my hair done (short and thinned out), ask about my sideburns if you must (just even them out), but overall, just let your scissors do the talking and I promise a generous tip in return."

In a Group Setting (say at a staff meeting):

People are often surprised at my insight and willingness to speak up. They think that because I am soft-spoken and reserved one-on-one that I would be more so in a formal group setting.

What they don't understand is that it's the personal part of personal interaction that I find acutely uncomfortable. Speaking in front of a crowd is easy because in a group, people become anonymous, impersonal, other. And when someone from the group responds to what I say, they are responding to the idea presented not to me, and that makes me feel safe.

Sometimes after a meeting where I had been especially vocal, a person will come up to me and ask if I would be interested in discussing my ideas further with them, perhaps over lunch. I find a polite way to tell them I can't and that surprises them. I don't tell them this, of course, but I decline because that's just too much, too close for comfort.

Perhaps I miss out on promotions this way, and I'll admit that it's frustrating to watch people with an abundance of social skills but a dearth of intelligence work their way up the pay scale, finally settling in a position where their ignorance can flourish.

At the Bookstore:

I head first for the magazine rack, but my time there is short - catching up on the latest computer news and reviews. Most of my time is spent among the Literature shelves, particularly the New Fiction section.

Some recommend meeting women in the grocery store but that seems wrong to me. How much can you learn about a person based on vegetables, meats, and starches? I find the bookstore much more telling. I mean if I see a woman smelling the rind of a cantaloupe, what does that tell me, that she likes fresh fruit? But if I see a woman flipping through Sylvia Plath, I know she's hurting something bad. If she's reading Jane Austin, I'm thinking she's probably got impossibly high standards. Jack Kerouac tells me she's probably too bohemian for me and Toni Morrison that I'm not smart enough for her. And on and on. Much more informative.

Of course, being as shy as I am, all I ever do is watch. . .or what's the more modern word for it? I lurk. And if I see a woman reading Douglas Coupland or Michael Chabon or T.C. Boyle, I just dream about what might be if I had bravado, and lines, and looks.

In My Dreams:

I'm taller and better looking. I dress better because I know how to dress better. I'm smooth and suave. I have women at hello.

I had a phase where I dated casually and widely. I unintentionally stole a couple girlfriends from their boyfriends though I didn't know it at the time. However, I am now past all that exploration because I have found the love of my life. She is warm, witty, sharp, and in possession of natural, effortless beauty.

We work at our relationship. We do our best to fight fair. We agree to never hold grudges and we try not to.

I enjoy spoiling my love with style and surprise. I send her random, gooey text messages while she is at work - things like, "all u ever have to be is u and I'll fall in love over and over again." I imagine her reading those messages in the middle of a meeting. I imagine her hiding her smile behind her hand, pretending to cough. After the meeting is over she shows the message to her girlfriends and they laugh while wondering why their boyfriends aren't as wildly romantic.

She finds surprising ways to return my favors. She sneaks a secret cup of pudding into my lunch bag. She draws a heart on the back side of my spoon so I don't notice it until one of my coworkers points it out. He laughs at me just as her coworkers laughed at her but he laughs for a different reason, though deep down inside where he'll never admit it, he laughs for the same reason.

[the end]

BTW, if you'd like a link to my "secret" story blog, email me (lonetomato at yahoo dot com) and I'll send you the link.

261. free as a bird

First things first.

This is an entry about a "date" I had with Quest Girl (see blog 240 and blog 249 for the backstory). Technically, it wasn't a date. We were just hanging out but for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to refer to it as a date (because typing out "date" is shorter than "hanging out" and easier to deal with grammatically).

Now the reason for this short disclaimer is because there's an outside chance that QG has read, reads, or might read this blog so I want to dot the I's and cross the T's, so to speak.

As for the date itself, I have good news, bad news (sort of), and great news, each of which I'll get to in turn.

First the good news.

I finally worked up the stones to ask her out. Here's a brief account of how it went down. I've been attending what my church refers to as a C-Group (basically a Bible study). Well as it turns out (not entirely by coincidence), I go to the same CG that QG attends (but that's not the only reason I chose that one). Well a couple weeks ago, after the formal part of the study was over, everybody was hanging out, chilling and shooting the breeze. Somehow it worked out that QG and I end up chatting and it was cool. Questions went back and forth and it was fun.

Now all the time we're chatting, I'm thinking that this is the perfect (I mean, tailor made perfect) chance for me to ask her out. I keep telling myself that this is the opportunity I've been waiting for, that it would be so easy, that all I have to do is ask, but every time it's my turn in the conversation to ask a question, I ask about something random like "how long have you worked at the tea shop" or "what's your ethnicity" or "so, do you come here often?" I ask all kinds of questions except for the one I really want to ask.

Well finally she has to go talk to someone else before they leave and so we say, bye, nice to talk to you and go our separate ways.

As you might imagine, all through the drive home I was beating myself up, kicking myself HARD. I couldn't believe myself, how lame, how useless, how stupid and weak I was. There's a Weezer song that's particularly apropos:

What's the deal with my brain
Why am I so obviously insane
In a perfect situation
I let love down the drain
There's the pitch, slow and straight
All I have to do is swing and I'm a hero
But I'm a zero

I almost felt too ashamed to pray but it was all I could do to keep myself from driving into oncoming traffic. But it was hard because I'd been praying for just the kind of opportunity I had that night but I failed, floundered, flunked (and some other words that start with "f"). I felt as if I had let God down again. But I did pray, first for God to forgive me for being such a spineless wuss, then for me to forgive myself for being a spineless wuss, and finally for the backbone to move beyond being a spineless wuss. It was a pretty tortured prayer session for most of the drive home.

And then.

And then it was as if a switch was flipped and everything turned around. Before I realized it had happened, I went from torturous self-immolation to joyous celebration. It hit me that she had sort of come up and talked to me that night and during the course of the conversation, it seemed as if she was asking more than her fair share of questions. In addition, she had mentioned things she'd remembered I'd said in previous weeks at the Bible study. I realized that despite my utter failure at asking her out that night, that I still had a chance - a good chance, in fact.

It's a good thing my roommates weren't home when I got back because I probably would have freaked them out with my fists-in-the-air, end zone victory dance around our living room. I made a stupid spectacle of myself because I felt as if I'd just won the lottery. Not only did I have more than all the encouragement I needed to ask QG out the next time I saw her, I also felt the glow of answered prayer. I mean what else could have brought about such a 180 degree change in attitude?

Well that Sunday rolls around and I've got the butterflies churning inside but I'm determined not to let them stop me. Service ends and I'm talking with a friend when I see her walking out the door. I don't think I properly ended my conversation with whomever I was talking to because I set out after her. We chitted and chatted to the parking lot and as she made for her car, I almost wussed out again but I MADE myself ask her if she wanted to go hangout sometime. She said she didn't want to date but if it was just hanging out then she'd be up for that.

I got her number, we said goodbye, and I walked back to my own car feeling as if I'd swum the Gibraltar Strait, run with the bulls in Pamplona, and scaled Everest. I felt like a bad ass. A couple days later I give her a call and we decided to see a movie, The Namesake starring Kal Penn (Kumar, from the movie Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle).

Okay, so that's the good news. The bad news is. . .

I thought the movie was okay, but it tried to cram too much into too small a space. But that's not the bad news. QG and I grab a bite to eat afterwards (well, I ate, she had already eaten) and we get to talk some more and that was nice. I walk her back to her car and I casually ask if she'd like to get together again sometime. She very nicely, very politely declines, suggesting we just see each other at CG and at church.

That's the bad news but here's the great news.

The amazing, almost too good to be true fact is that I was absolutely, one hundred one percent fine with that. And it may sound strange but I was nearly giddy with delight - not because she said no but because I was okay with her saying no. Driving home, I felt ten feet tall, strong as a herd of wild elephants, and able to leap tall buildings using nothing but my little toe. I felt free as a bird.

See, one of the things that used to cripple me when asking girls out was the fear of rejection. Now unless they're a player of the highest order, every guy feels some ounce of fear when asking someone out. In my case, it used to be a ton of fear because I had a fragile self esteem so when I got turned down, I would crumble into a pathetic puddle of self loathing. When this happened, it would take a while to get back to feeling anything like normal. Of course I hated feeling like that so instead of risking rejection, I accepted the lonely despair of singleness because that felt like bliss in comparison.

So when QG turned me down and I realized that I didn't disintegrate, I discovered that I had become a stronger person. I was no longer the fragile glass man like Samuel L. Jackson's character in the movie Unbreakable or the lonely painter in the movie Amelie, I was Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything, able to ask out the most beautiful girl at school despite the odds against him (because one of the reasons I wanted to ask QG out was because I thought she was prettiest by far at the church).

I don't know if I'm getting across the magnitude of this attitudinal change and how liberating this is for me. Imagine a hydrophobic swimming in the ocean, imagine an agoraphobic going to the mall. This approaches blind man seeing, lame man walking levels. Again, I feel free as a bird - a large bird able to fly intercontinental distances. Maybe even an alien space bird, able to traverse the galaxy.

No, things didn't work out as hoped but that doesn't matter. I've discovered a newfound resiliency. i've learned that I CAN ask out the prettiest girl and that she'll say yes and that even if it never goes beyond the first date, I will survive, as long as I know how to love I know I'll stay alive. I've got all my life to live, I've got all my love to give and I'll survive.

I will survive!

252. a confession

I believe it was Sting...no, I know it was Sting. He said in an interview right before (or maybe it was after) his CD, The Soul Cages, that sometimes when you can't write, it's because there's something you want to say but don't want to or you're afraid to...something like that.

Well all this week, I've been trying to write a blog entry but it's like drawing blood from a stone, like pulling teeth, like trying to get George W to listen to military advice (sorry, I couldn't help myself...more on this in another blog perhaps). I've started a couple and some of them have the potential to be really entertaining (and embarrassing for me, but often, I can't do one without the other), but they all felt forced and wrong and just plain bad.

I'm stalling, of course, because I still don't want to write what I suppose I have to write.

And so,

I'll just come right to it.

These past few weeks, I've been writing about someone I've come to refer to as Quest Girl (see blog 240, 246, 247, and 249). Basically, she's a girl i've been eyeing at my church - a girl I've been unable to ask out for what I believe are a myriad of reasons, but I'm sure most people just think I'm just too shy and/or scared to...and maybe they're right. Regardless, here I am, two months since I first noticed her and nothing to show for it.

That's all old news, and I'm about to get to the bit that I need to confess, but there's some back-story that needs to be covered in order to get the whole picture...but let me get to it and then I'll go back and let you in on all the history.

So a few weeks ago, I was at work (I work at a records storage warehouse, pulling boxes and files) and my supervisor had me working on a special project. See, we house millions of files and, of course, sometimes files get misplaced (don't call them lost, they hate that) and one of the only ways to find them is to go to each box that had files placed in them on the days around the time when the files got los...misplaced.

Here's what I mean (and no, I'm not stalling again, this is the thing I'm going to confess...you'll see). My special project was to find two files. I was given two things to accomplish this: 1, they gave me the numbers that referenced the target files and 2, they gave me a list that was probably seven or eight pages long. This was a list of each box that had any kind of file re-filed into it. The idea is, the misplaced files were miss-placed into the wrong box and so the wrong box must be one of the hundreds of boxes that were touched a few days before and a few days after the file was supposed to have been put away.

Unfortunately, that means going to each and every one of those hundreds of boxes and flipping through the dozens of files inside those boxes to see if the missing files were misplaced there.

Not. Fun.

Now a project like this isn't exactly brain surgery and so it's easy to let your mind wander. At the time, I found my mind wandering to thoughts of Quest Girl and about whether or not I would man up and ask her out. As I went from box to box, I wavered back and forth between deciding to just go for it and deciding to remain comfortably single. After looking through a hundred or so boxes, it became clear that my chances of finding these files were going from slim to shady.

See, the farther you get from the box where the files were supposed to be, the less likely you are to find the files because the most common way that a file gets misplaced is when you accidentally grab two files instead of just the one that belongs in the box. In that case, the missing files will be in the box before or the box after the target box. Another mistake that can cause this is for the files to be sorted wrong before they are put away. In this case, you'll usually find the file in the aisle or at least the floor where they were supposed to be.

I had already looked into all the boxes on the aisle as well as the floor where they should have been. I was five nines sure (99.999 percent...see the five nines?) that I was never going to find these files because not only was I on an entirely different floor from where the files should have been, I also learned from another co-worker that I was the SECOND person to search through these boxes for these files. Oh, and I forgot to mention that these files have been missing for six or seven months.

Anyway, I'm flipping through yet another box when I casually (carelessly?) pray to God. At first, I just asked that God would help me find the files so that I could stop looking for them (I still had one more entire floor to search through after the one I was already on) but then I decided to have some fun. And so I prayed this prayer: "Lord, if you help me find these files, I'll ask Quest Girl out the next time I see her."

It wasn't the next box, or the box after that, or even the one after that. I don't know how many more boxes I looked through, but I do know that I didn't even make it to the end of the aisle I was in before I found those damn files (both of them were in the same box, but that was to be expected - we knew if we found them that they would be together).

I was elated, ecstatic, euphoric because not only did I find these files that no one believed would be found, I had a mandate to ask Quest Girl out - no more waffling, just do it because that was the deal. I was pumped because I felt like I had God's stamp of approval for asking her out and how confident do you think that made me?

Well, not confident enough, because I believe I found those files on a Wednesday afternoon and by the time that Sunday rolled around, I was pleading with God for Quest Girl to not be there because once again, I didn't want to go through with it. But she was there.

And I didn't ask her out.

And I felt awful.

And I asked God to forgive me for being such a wuss.

And then another Sunday came and went without me asking her out.

And then another.

And each time I asked for forgiveness.

But.

But I haven't been able to forget about it. I've been trying to rationalize my way out of the deal, but it's like an itch that won't go away and now it's gotten to the point where I can't write a blog worth reading even when I've got material aplenty. I've got lost of stuff I want to write about but this week, each time I tried, I knew it wasn't worth posting. Believe me, if I had posted anything I started this week, you would have been crying tears of boredom before finishing the first paragraph.

And I don't know if this blog has been worth reading, but it's the best thing by far that I've written this week. It's certainly the most effortless blog of the week. And I suppose that confessing this was what I needed to write.

But there's more to it than this prayer and those files and that girl.

But I've written too much already. I'll try to get to the other stuff tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear your comments. I know I have readers across the Christian spectrum from Pentecostals to more conservative types and everywhere in between and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

249. the junk in my trunk

Okay, went to church again tonight, saw Quest Girl there again but didn't do anything about it.

And I know I should just man up and talk to her, and I know it should be simple and natural, and I know it shouldn't be a big deal, and on and on and on.

But...

But it's not that I didn't want to, it's not that I was afraid to, it's not that I didn't have the chance to. It's not any of those things.

And I'm trying to put my finger on it, trying to figure out how to explain it, and the only thing I can come up with is that I didn't want to let go of my discomfort with talking to people I don't really know.

But it's more than that. That's just the surface symptom. I think the real reason goes a lot deeper. Saying I didn't want to step out of my comfort zone is just the Bondo over the rust job underneath.

Now I know that my experiences (all of them bad) with relationships is small peanuts compared to what many people go through, but they're my peanuts and they go beyond just boy meets girl who doesn't want to be with him. These issues also have to do with my "relationship with God" (and I put that in quotes because while I understand what people are trying to get at when they use that language, I think using the word "relationship" is problematic...and I've written about this before so I won't go into it here).

The story is too long and messy for a brief synopsis (you can see blog 174 if you want more of the backstory), but suffice it to say that there was a time when I was confused and angry and disappointed with God because of the way things ended between a girl and I (and God had a huge part to play in the whole affair, or at least I thought so at the time...again, see blog 174 for all the gory details).

I don't blame God anymore for what happened. I don't understand why things happened the way they did, but I don't let that lack of understanding affect they way I feel about God.

But tonight, as I was deciding between talking to Quest Girl and just digging out, I started to get upset because I knew all the reasons why I should go up and talk to her, but I just couldn't do it and I knew it had to do with more than just the fact that doing so was outside my comfort zone - that maybe I'm more screwed up than I thought when it comes to relationships.

And as I was walking out to my car and as I was driving back home, I was beating myself up inside because I knew I had made the wrong decision, but at the same time, I knew it was more than a comfort zone issue...and I hesitate to call it fear because it's not that simple.

An analogy then.

Don't know if it's true or not, but I heard a story once about circus elephants. When they're young, the trainers restrain the elephants with relatively lightweight chains - just strong enough so that their young legs can't break free. As the elephants get older, the trainers keep using the same lightweight chain because even though the elephants have grown strong enough to break them, they still see the chains the way their young minds saw them - as unbreakable.

That's kind of like me with relationships. Because I've had such rotten experiences in the past, I just assume (even before things have begun) that things are going to end badly and so why even try? The chain held fast before and so my mind, it remains unbreakable.

But I'm not an elephant and I know that my past experiences with relationships are just that: PAST experiences that have nothing to do with who and what I am today. I know I'm a great catch who has a lot to offer a woman and so I should be able to snap that chain without even trying. But maybe there's a hierarchy of brain function at work here such that the CAN'T logic overrides the CAN logic.

And I know that's a terribly unclear, pseudo-scientific explanation, but it's the closest I can get to explaining what I felt and why I didn't talk to her or ask her out.

Look, here's the bottom line. For the time being, I'm just going to enjoy my ability to enjoy being single. If I end up dating Quest Girl or any other woman, it will happen through a natural, organic process (as in getting to know her gradually in social settings) as opposed to the more common direct approach (just asking her out).

Does this mean I'm avoiding the issue and not dealing with the junk in my trunk? I don't know, maybe, but I have better things to do with myself than to twist myself into a pretzel just to shorten the distance between point A and point B. It's like the Beastie Boys say, "slow and low, that is the tempo."

247. A Love Story In Three Acts

(based on a true story)

Act One

He graduates from high school and is full of bravado and naivete. He believes that he is God's gift to women and that he will have no trouble finding a girlfriend. He thinks his main problem will be finding someone mature enough for him because most of the women he sees seem superficial and materialistic.

He also suffers from a mistaken idealization of the female gender. Bombarded by critiques of male stereotypes on television and in movies, he somehow draws the conclusion that men are all pigs and women are all angels. He doesn't see himself as a pig which is why (as stated above) he thinks he will have no problem getting a girlfriend once he finds one he wants to date.

Act Two

He's halfway through college and is nursing both a broken heart and a shattered sense of self-worth. At some point, he found someone to date but quickly learned that women are just as screwed up and prone to bouts of selfish, pig-headed behavior as men are. He also learns that love is hard and that it is more akin to a winner-take-all competition (a game, if you will) than the flowery dance of courtship portrayed in Hollywood romantic comedies (many of which, despite being a man, he enjoys).

Having lost his earlier wide-eyed optimism, he turns jaded and cynical. But he still longs to be with someone because he remembers how great it felt before things went bad.

But time and time again, he tries to pursue relationships only to find them ending before they've even begun. This batters his already damaged self-esteem and he finds himself wondering if any woman would ever want to be with him.

Act Three (anticlimax)

In his thirties now, he has regained a healthy view of himself, but he's been apart from love for so long now that he's forgotten why it is that people pursue one another. He's forgotten how it feels (the rush and the wonder and the boundless joy) and so he can't remember why it is that anyone would want to go through all the messy trouble of trying to start a relationship in the first place, not to mention all the work it takes to make it last.

The idea of love seems like a fairy tale fantasy - a good story he once thought to be true but he now categorizes it as a thing that (to reverse the old adage) isn't true because it's too good to be.

Besides, he thinks, being single ain't all that bad.

The end.

(hopefully a sequel is in the works)

246. far too much thinking about relationships

[preface]

Some blog entries emerge effortlessly - they almost write themselves. Some are like pulling teeth with tweezers - they don't want to come out, even if they have to. This entry is one of the latter. I started writing it Wednesday night and only a paragraph came out. Through the next few nights (and some mornings), I managed to squeeze out a few more sentences, but they didn't come easy.

But this was an entry that had to be written. I write to try and unravel and organize the thoughts stewing in my mind and I knew that this was something I had to sort out.

Unfortunately, I don't come to any conclusions or decisions, but it was a worth the effort nevertheless.

Anyway, I'm just writing this preface as an excuse as to why I haven't lived up to my at-least-one-entry-per-week rule.

My apologies.

[end preface]

Can you save me
from the ranks
of the freaks
who suspect
they could never love anyone
("Save Me" by Aimee Mann from the Magnolia Soundtrack)

I suppose that I could love you
if I wasn't so afraid.
I might go berserk if it did work
and I didn't feel betrayed.
I've been writing off love for so long now
it's all I know to do
("I Suppose" by Loudon Wainright III, from the Grown Man CD)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about this girl I've been checking out at my church. Well, this entry isn't about her...at least not directly. This blog is (as with most of my blogs) about me.

So I've written before (see blog 162) about how 2006 was a year when I finally (somehow) found contentment in being single. And while, on the one hand, I'm glad to be free from the constant nagging ache that used to weigh me down, I'm also finding that there's a lead lining to this cloud.

So that girl I wrote about in blog 240? I actually did get to talk to her a couple weeks ago and it was nice. Never got around to asking for her number or for coffee but I did learn that she's been coming to this church for about a year now so I figured there was no need to rush.

That week, I found myself thinking about talking to her again, developing a list of places where I could take her (prime candidate: the just-opened Olympic Sculpture Park) but as the week progressed, I also started thinking about what I might have to give up if things worked out - the long, messy process of learning one another's routines and needs and sensitive spots and bad habits. And I've written before about how meeting new people stresses me out so that was there as well, but the main reservation I was having was all the freedom I've come to enjoy as a single person.

Back when I used to complain to my friends about being single, the one thing they would always say was that I should enjoy being able to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. They all, even the ones in healthy, thriving relationships, told me about how they envied how I could just up and decide to see a movie or take up karate or move to, say, Seattle, and I wouldn't have to clear it with anybody.

So the week goes by and Sunday comes around. I went to church and I saw here there during the service (my friend and I walked in late) but once church was over, we just made a bee line for the door. He was tired and hungry and didn't feel like hanging around. As for myself, I...I don't know. Talking to her again just didn't seem al that important and now that he mentioned it, I was hungry as well. So we just dug out.

This week, I found myself thinking again about how amazing and perfect this girl seems, but I also thought about how unmotivated I am to make anything happen. And that got me thinking about the lines from the songs I quoted above. Had I become one of the "ranks of the freaks who suspect they could never love anyone?" Have I been "writing off love for so long now [that] it's all I know to do?"

I suppose for most people, this would be a no-brainer. Just ask her out anyway because you never know what might happen. Maybe she doesn't want to go out with me and she'll say no. Maybe we'll go out and we'll find that we aren't compatible. Maybe it'll be marching bands and ticker tape parades from the start and we'll live happily ever after. Maybe things will start out great but one of us will make an irreconcilable error and the whole escapade will end in a smoldering heap of burned bridges. Or maybe we'll just end up being friends.

Yeah, just-ask-her-out would be the modus operandi for most normal people, but I guess I ain't like most normal people.

So what now? What does this mean? What is God's design for life (and for me since I am, as far as I know, alive)?

This week, I've been thinking more about these questions than about this girl. See, in 2006, I did a lot of writing about the concept of the kingdom of God (see blog 161, 207, 227 and 216 for examples) and while kingdom living and dating seem unrelated, they aren't. See, living out the teachings of Christ has to do with living out a culture - the culture of the kingdom of God. And I believe that one of the core values of this kingdom is family - man, wife, child(ren).

I believe that God created people to be with one another. Any reading of the first few chapters of Genesis will make this plain. Man felt a longing for companionship before the Fall and that means we were designed from the start to pine not just for relationship with God, but also for one another. Seen in this way, a whole, Biblical life includes marriage because in learning to live with one other person, we also learn to live with larger groups of people - neighborhoods, cities, nations.

And so I wonder if all my reservations about asking this girl out are moot - that I should be asking her out anyway because it is, in part, my duty as a Christian. But I balk at that idea because it seems too utilitarian and unromantic. But what if it's true?

Now I know that there's a Biblical out to this in the form of the gift of singleness as written about in I Corinthians 7, but this gift is meant to be an exception to the rule rather than the norm. So am I in the exception camp or the rule camp?

For most of my life, my answer was that I knew beyond any shadow of any doubt that I did NOT have this gift. However, after the past year or so, I'm not as sure as I once was. I mean the idea of sharing one's life with another is appealing on a number of levels and for a multitude of reasons, but at the same time, it's not something I want badly enough to overcome my lazy contentment as a single person. I'm a victim of Newton's first law of (e)motion: a person in singleness tends to stay in singleness.

From what I've seen, people who are single for a long time tend to gravitate towards one of two opposites. Some become increasingly lonely and desperate and so they lower their standards until they meet someone, anyone. Others, become more and more comfortable in their singleness and their standards go up because a person would have to be that much more amazing for them to give up the comforts of singlehood.

I find myself squarely in the latter half of that pairing. And I wonder if my standards are far too high. In fact, I'm pretty certain that my standards are too high. But then again, I think there's a good reason for setting high standards. Maybe part of the reason for the high divorce rate has to do, in part, with people settling for less. It's been said that some people put more effort into deciding what car to buy than into which person to marry. And I don't want to end up a divorce statistic.

Maybe the bottom line is this: If God wants me in a relationship (with Quest girl, or someone else I haven't met yet) then it will happen and I don't have to worry about it. But I don't think that's how it works because God doesn't want me to sin, but I sin anyway.

I don't know. I know things would be far simpler if I didn't think about it so much, if I didn't have such impossibly high standards, if I wasn't so content as a single person, and if I wasn't so resistant to meeting new people (aka shy). But I am what I am. But maybe that's not how I'm supposed to be.

Eh, I don't know. All this writing and thinking has made me even more unmotivated to start any kind of relationship.

Blah.

240. oh no, not again

I would first of all like to apologize for my lack of entries. I try to post at least one entry per week. It's been more than two weeks since my last entry. In my (feeble) defense, the internet has been down for the past three days and I did have a blog entry just about ready to post (and I'll probably be posting that one in a few days) but I was too lazy to finish that entry when I knew I wouldn't be able to upload it.

I had planned on finishing that entry and posting it tonight (internet access came back on this afternoon) but there's something on my mind and I want to get it out before it slips away (as inspiration and ideas are wont to do).

See...hmm, how to begin, how much context to include...this has been an odd year for me. No, I don't mean because of the move to Seattle. I wrote about it back in February (see blog 126) and it basically has to do with the fact that for the first time in my life, I've been content as a single person.

For those who didn't know me back when, it's hard to understand what a big deal it is for me to write that because I've had more than one friend say to me, "would you just shut up about being single already?" I used to complain about it all the time. It was like this aching hole in my life that I desperately wanted to fill. The ache was so bad, it weighed heavily on everyday decisions.

For example, sometimes I would drive down to Borders and if someone were to ask me why I was going, I'd probably tell them that I wanted to browse the new fiction section or to look at magazines. And while that's what I'd do while I was there, the real reason was to see if I might meet some really cool girl reading some really cool book that I could make some really cool comment on which would be the beginning of a really cool relationship.

Fact is, even if I did meet such a girl reading just such a book and even if I thought of some witty remark to make about it, there's no way I'd have had the balls to deliver it. See, I have no game whatsoever - zero, zip, zeitgeist (yeah, I know zeitgeist doesn't fit there but I heard the word the other day and it sounded so hip and smart, I was dying to use it). The only pickup line I know is, "hello," and I have no followups. Of course some might say, just be yourself, but "myself" doesn't like to meet new people (I find it stressful and terribly awkward even if it's something as casual as talking to the person cutting my hair) and so being that wouldn't help at all.

Anyway, so that going-to-Borders example is one example of how sad and pathetic my life used to be. Think that's not so bad? How's this. Sometimes I'd see an ad for an art exhibit that looked really interesting but I wouldn't go because one of the reasons I wanted to have a girlfriend was so that I would have someone to discuss art and ideas with and the thought of seeing yet another art show alone was just too disappointing and so I just wouldn't go at all.

I was that lonely and that frustrated ever since I graduated from high school.

And then for some reason, once 2006 rolled around, all those feelings went away.

I can't explain it. It's not like I had some grand epiphany. Nothing dramatic occurred in my life. I didn't have some mountaintop experience with God. There were no big changes in my life at all, really. I was just driving around one day late January or early February when I realized that I didn't care that I was single anymore. And I don't remember the circumstances surrounding this realization because that's how much I didn't care about it. Despite the fact that my singleness was something that weighed heavily on me for years and years, it went away so cleanly and effortlessly that even when I realized it wasn't there anymore, I wasn't surprised. I wasn't even curious about why/how it went away. I wasn't even happy or sad to be rid of it - that's how completely it just went away.

Recently though (say, in the past two weeks), I've been casually praying a prayer that goes something like this, "Lord, please teach me about love." In praying that, I'm merely asking God to help me understand what it is to love, what it looks like and how I can better love those around me. And I suppose the subtext of that prayer is asking God, once again, to bring someone special into my life because to my mind, the easiest way to learn about love is to be in love.

Okay, so ALL that to say that tonight at church, there was this girl sitting at the end of my row and I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time. I thought she looked really amazing - short hair, a sharp, smart dresser (though not overly trendy), a friendly smile, and she was at church - and for the first time this year, I was sad that I was single.

I'm still too new to this church to know if she's one of the regulars or of this was her first visit. Maybe I'll never see her again and even if I do see her again, I'd have no idea how to approach her or what to say even if I did.

And I wonder if this is a kind of answer to my prayer. And I wonder if this means that my year-long respite from the angst of singleness is over. And I wonder if now, finally, in this new city, I'll find someone who finds me as well.

I don't know.

Who but God knows and what but time will tell?

205. what is love?

Recently, I've been thinking again about love and relationship and desire and beauty. And I wonder how much (if any) of the world can be understood (as God means for us to understand it) from a life devoid of love - and by love, I mean the kind of love experienced between a man and a woman, devoted to one another through holy matrimony 'til death do them part. Because according to Jesus, the two greatest commandments of the Bible are all about love (Matthew 22:36-40).

See, I've been thinking about my relationship with God and in particular, I've been asking myself this question, "do I love God?"

But to answer that question, I have to ask, "well, what is love?"

And I don't have an answer.

And I think about never having been in a relationship with a woman, and I wonder if that hinders me from understanding the blissful, heady, messy tangle that I imagine love to be. And I think of the movie The Cooler, starring William H. Macy and how love transformed him from a man with such bad luck that he was used to break winning streaks in Vegas casinos to a man with strength and courage and an incredible streak of good luck. And I think of the movie Punch Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler and how love turns him from a bumbling, mumbling wimp to a bumbling, mumbling stud who says to the man trying to extort money out of him, "I have a love in my life and that makes me stronger than anything you can imagine," and it does.

And yes, I know I'm talking about hollywood movies but (to reference another movie) there's a scene in some romantic comedy that I can't think of right now, but it contains a scene where a woman is confronted with the charge that her romantic notions are all based on fictionalized accounts in movies and books and she replies with something along the lines of, "well, the fact that someone wrote that means it came from somewhere." And what she was getting at was the idea that in order for these idealized romantic cliches to have weight, they must have some kind of resonance with something in the real world.

On top of that, even though I've never been in a relationship, I have been around for the fireworks that happen at the start of such relationships and so I know a bit about how love empowers me, how it makes me feel giddy and invincible, how (as Jack Nicholas put it in the movie As Good As It Gets) it "makes me want to be a better man."

Unfortunately these relationships never took off, but I got enough of a taste to know what a powerful, life-changing force love can be.

But a taste is not a meal and so even though I've parted the curtains and seen the rich banquet that love can be, I've never been given a spot at its table.

All that to say, I don't have a first-hand experience of what love is. I can barely imagine what it's like to have a woman love me in return. That sounds too impossibly, amazingly beautiful to be true, but it is true. The other night I saw an elderly couple walking out of the Honolulu Academy of Arts and they were holding hands and I couldn't help but wonder at what their life was like.

And I know there are kinds of love other than the romantic type. Parental love, for example. And yes, I know my parents love me but they show their love through material, monetary support - putting me through a private high school and through college and letting me live with them, etc.

And now that I think about it, that's the only kind of love I know how to give - I'm generous when it comes to helping my friends in need whether it be loaning them money (without expecting to be paid back, although they usually do) or by fixing their amps or helping them move. I do stuff and I give them stuff, and I suppose that's a kind of love.

But to be honest, it doesn't feel like love. I mean, I've always been a generous person, sometimes even towards people I don't like and so is my generosity towards friends love or is it just the way I'm put together or something that emerges from my upbringing?

I don't know.

And back to the relationship bit, what is it that I'm longing for? What if I had had a relationship in the past, how would that change things for me now? What if I ended up damaged and confused as a result, instead of just ignorant and confused, as I am now?

But again, I think of something I read about Thomas Merton (and I've written about this before - see blog 51 and blog 52), about how even as a trappist monk who spent years contemplating the things of God 24/7, he didn't fully come to understand love until he had been in a relationship.

I don't know.

And I suppose it doesn't matter, because I can long for and theorize and write about these ideas about love until my fingers fall off but the fact would remain that I am who I am and I've only experienced what I've lived through. Maybe I am less of a fully formed individual for never having been in a deep, committed, loving relationship. Maybe I can't really understand the power of love until I've been through the thick of it.

Oh well. That doesn't excuse me from living. Yeah, maybe I don't understand, but I do the best I can with what I have and what I know.

And maybe that's enough to get me by until love comes to town and I catch that train.

202. heart vs mind

I'm hanging out with a friend who's about to get her PhD in Psychology. And I haven't seen her in a while (other than the time I bumped into her two weeks ago which is kind of how we ended up hanging that night) and I'm having a blast asking her all kinds of questions about psychology and culture and church and Christianity. And then I share with her, something that I've always been curious about - brilliant people falling in love. And I used the movie, A Beautiful Mind, as an example. I shared with her how I've always found it fascinating that someone as brilliant as John Nash would fall in love.

I suppose the fascination came from an image that I had of geniuses that painted them as passionless analytical minds, wrestling with arcane, intractable problems. For some reason, the thought that such a mind would subject itself to the wild passions of love seemed incongruous to me. And my friend called me out on that issue by asking me something along the lines of, "why do you think brilliant people are immune to love?"

And I was stumped.

Looking back now, I suppose that it was kind of silly to impose that disconnect between the mind and the heart. See, I think I was unknowingly buying into a kind of dualism where intellect and emotion were at odds with one another and so, in my mind, someone with a gigantic brain would have little to do with emotions and the same would be true the other way around.

But I think I know how I ended up with this misshapen idea. Okay, think about a time when you fell in love, and I mean fell HARD? You basically became a blathering idiot - reason and rationale evaporated and you were left wandering in a turbulent wasteland where wonder and desire clashed and warred (or maybe that's just my experience with love). It seems like the antithesis of reason.

And on the flip side, I think of people who work in think tanks, people who spend their time in front of dusty chalkboards white from ideas tasted then jettisoned, rubbed out into the ether of eraser dust. To me, these people love number and data and algorithm - the solidity and certainty of formula, of theorem and postulate. I thought they would have no patience for the messy uncertainty of love.

But now I think of Spock and Data from Star Trek. Spock tried to rid himself of emotion through discipline and logic but there were times when he let his love for his fellow crew influence him in ways that betrayed his logical paradigm (and I'm no Trekkie so don't ask me for examples). On the other hand, Data was, by definition, a product of logic circuits (a computer), but he was always fascinated by human emotion and tried to emulate it through behavioral study.

I wonder now how (cow brown) these characters both reinforce and undercut the disconnect between intellect and emotion. How one tries to suppress his emotions through discipline and how the other is created without emotions but yearns for them.

And I'm not sure how yet, but I think this misunderstanding (that the heart and the mind are at odds) has something to do with the chaos and injustice of the world today. I mean this whole postmodern unrest has its roots in a distrust of the heady, mechanical cosmology of modernism. But we don't need to discard the mind in order to embrace the heart, we need to find a way to let the two work in concert.

But I'm not sure how, but it sure is fun to think about...more blogs on this to come, I'm sure.

193. I suppose

So I was hanging out with some friends the other night after playing a show with my band and somehow my blog got mentioned and then someone made a comment that my blogs aren't as bitter as they used to be.

See, I don't know exactly what happened or why or how, but sometime in January I stopped worrying about getting into a relationship. And this might not sound like a big deal, but anyone who knew me before January would tell you that this is a miracle of Biblical proportions.

It's hard to convey how deep the longing for relationship used to be. Hard for two reasons: one, because it was a very desperate, needy, aching-void kind of longing that's hard to express without appearing as if I'm using hyperbole and two, because I don't feel it anymore and I don't really want to use my imagination to put myself back there just so I can describe how awful it was.

Suffice it to say that I used to be a very bitter, lonely guy and I wasn't afraid to rant about it in my blogs (see blog 73 for an example). And I wasn't afraid to rant about it to my friends either. More than one friend made the comment, "sheesh, would you do us all a favor and just get a girlfriend already?" And I can understand their frustrations because I must've sounded like a squeaky wheel that just didn't know when to quit.

However, now that I've found this contentment, I wonder if there's something I've lost as well. I mean, most of the stories I used to write were about finding or losing love. I find it's harder to put myself in that imaginary space - to imagine what it's like to be in love and to use that as the raw material out of which to carve a story.

And maybe it's odd that my stories were about love because I've always had a kind of hyper-cynical view of love as portrayed in movies and television (and I'm not talking about cheesy, soapy love stories). My favorite part of any movie that involved relationships was the bit where things fell apart and people were heartbroken, because that's the only part of the story that I could relate to. I don't understand courtship or wooing, I don't understand the giddy butterflies that accompany the early stages of a relationship, I don't understand the warm, buttery language of touch. I am, however, rather well versed in love purloined, spurned, unrequited, and so (and this is messed up, I know) the breakup scene was always a kind of private joy for me because that was something I could recognize.

So why would I write stories about the very thing that I don't understand? I can think of two reasons. First of all, the way I try to understand things is by writing about them. Secondly (and this is a bit embarrassing to admit) the stories were a kind of acting out in imagination what I couldn't find in life. They were a kind of wishful thinking. It was a substitute for what I wasn't experiencing in my life. But because they weren't informed by actual, real life experience, some of them had surreal elements about them (see Tired of Talking and The Birds and the Bag Lady).

And here's the other thing. That longing for relationship was the one thing that I really wanted out of life. It was the one thing that could drive me to elation when it seemed like something might work out or drive me to despair when it didn't. I'm a pretty laid back kind of guy, I take things in stride and it's generally very hard to get me worked up. But this love thing was the one constant agitator, the one sense of longing that made my heart burn, the one thing that I could count on to stir my passions.

And now that it's gone, my life feels clinical, rote, benign. I don't miss feeling lonely, but I do miss feeling...something. And what does this mean for me, this contentment? Does it mean that I'll be single and celibate for the rest of my life? That thought used to repulse me but now as I'm writing it, it doesn't faze me in the least. And I know some say that it's when you stop looking for it that love finds you, but even if I were to bump into the woman of my dreams walking down the street or in the new fiction section of a bookstore, I wonder if I could turn it all on again because honestly, the thought of getting into the whole business of making a relationship work just exhausts me. If it were to work, I think she would have to do the initiating, and that's pathetic and unmanly but that's just where I'm at right now. Because I'm content with where I'm at and why would I want to disturb that?

But if I were to find her (or she to find me) and if the cards on the table looked right and I had a hand to play, I think I'd still be willing to push my luck and go all in. I think.

And I'll end with this amazing song by Loudon Wainwright III called, "I Suppose."


I suppose that I could love you
though my mind tells me, "no way."
it says, "screw it, you've been through it,
it's not worth the price you pay"

then it reminds me of the last time
each gory detail
"it's a drag," it tells me, "bag it."
no my memory doesn't fail


and I suppose that I could love you
if my heart were still intact
it keeps ticking but not tricking me
like it used to, that's a fact

I've been burned and I have learned
to let the muscle do its job
I let it beat, it's no mean feat
no, it doesn't need to throb


and I suppose that I could love you
if I wasn't so afraid
I might go berserk if it did work
and I didn't feel betrayed

I've been writing off love for so long now
it's all I know to do
but if it's real this thing we feel
well then, yes, I could love you