I had this notion in my mind that it would be great, since I’m 25, stable, single, and have some extra time on my hands, (it would be great-) to actually have a phase in my life where I dated girls. Now this idea is specific, moreso than the 7th-grade or even college-aged idea - I mean taking a girl out for a short amount of time with no assumption of eternal connection imbedded into the fabric of our time together. Here’s what I had in my head:
Meet a girl walking into my building in the morning. It turns out we have similar schedules, and so I make a witty comment about her shoes or racing her into the building, and she laughs and I get her number. I wait a few days to call her, have a good but short conversation ending with a good invitation for some evening event. I pick her up, right on time, have an evening that was dynamic but not overwhelming, exciting but not scary, and planned to the T right down to saying goodnight, which is said quite appropriately with a gentle kiss on the cheek and a soft “I’ll call you.” This could be repeated, with the same or a different girl any number of times, with varied results of course, but essentially to discover what works and what does, where there’s chemistry and not, what a good date plan is and isn’t, ect. The plan was to not get instantly connected with just one girl, since I’ve been somewhat disappointed with that happening in the past. I mean, one girl when we both figure out that we want to be just with each other, but not force that as the understood start of spending time together. I don’t know if this makes me sound like a bastard, but oh well, this was what I had in mind.
I met Megan on Craigslist. Every once in a while I get some weird chemical in my brain that says “look at the craigslist personals - you never know”. The same thing happened last August, but the only thing that came of it was I played tennis one Saturday morning with a girl, whose name escapes me, and it wasn’t great at all. She beat me, we weren’t very interested in each other… just disappointment all around. So, like I said, I met Megan on craigslist, and she sent me a picture of her - she’s beautiful. We wrote a few e-mails back and forth. Then we talked on the phone last Sunday - for a while. But we did figure out we could get out together Monday night, so that was the plan. Everything went quite according to the picture in my head -I was funny and memorable, she was easy to talk to and fun to be with, it was pretty much what I imagined. I won’t explain in detail, but I’ll admit there was some misinterpretation with my kiss on the cheek move that created… an entirely different tangent that I wasn’t planning for. It actually made things jump far in advance of where I wanted them to be, and I’d like to blame Megan for that. But oh well, I can get over it.
But I couldn’t - I mean, I could, but I didn’t. Suddenly I wanted to see her again. It was amazing that I girl I didn’t know three days earlier I wanted to take out the very next night. Well, through miscommunication, Friday showed up and I was vowing off seeing Megan again. She has a different interpretation of “I’ll call you tomorrow” than I do. But, annoyed as I was that she had not called when she said she would, and has a bad habit already of not returning phone calls, she texted me Friday wanting to go see a movie. So we did. No plan this time. A lot of scrambling. But she laughs a lot, so I take a great deal of pleasure in that. The night ends like the first date, only in front of my house instead of hers. She says she’ll call me the next day - around noon. Well, that was yesterday. I’m back to the annoyed state that I was in Friday. This is not working, and it hasn’t even been a week of “dating”.
Now this is really just the frothy surface of an entire boiling cauldron in my life - most of which is boiling because of a girl that lives two time zones away and calls when she says she will, and even calls for what seems like no reason (even the day after I go on a date, which is crazy)… and she tells me I shouldn’t be dating girls I meet on craigslist or just because every roommate I had in college is now married or because I’m attracted to a certain girl or because I’m tired of being 25 and never having more than three months of consecutive dating relationship time… she tells me to be content with where I am. She tells me this, and it strikes pretty deep because she’s in there pretty deep.
And so here’s the rest of the cauldron: I feel that I’m missing out on an incredibly important part of life. The years are passing me by, and I have only been half-hearted about this endeavor for a while. My way of going about this whole thing has been more based on fatalism and chance than on action and directed desire, and I get sick of that. So, though my action seems petty and a little sad, it’s more action than I’ve been taking up to this point. I’m not saying my friend two time zones away is wrong about me needing to be more content with where I am. That would definitely solve the issue, wouldn’t it? But if we were just all content with being alone, the world would cease to grow and change. There’s a difference between being discontent with life in general, or with who you already have in your life - there’s an entirely different discontent wanting more, wanting something you feel you were made to have or be a part of… Contentment sounds great, but I can’t agree that it’s the solution to the problems of life. It is good to be content with where you are in life, what you do, your friends, your body, your mind, your heart. But we can’t rid our heart of all desires. We’re not Buddhists - we’re not stoic philosophers. The world was created from desire, not from obligation - from passion and want, not contentment and need. Desire brings people together - it can make life better, mend brokeness, push beyond our natural means. Desire writes books and paints frescos and… even tells dirty jokes. Desire is the companion of hope, not the enemy of righteousness. Desire can do wrong, because it is in our hands, but it is not wrong by mere existence. I am not prepared to give it up for a cold heart, or to make my heart stop boiling over for still water that is troubled by nothing. Even here, you can see that something is driving through my heart - it is good and evil and mine and somewhat not me at all.
Essentially, I’m saying I’m probably going to keep trying to date, or keep trying to get the woman that is in the deepest parts of that boiling pot to come to me - but I’m not going to do anything but keep trying until I succeed. I hope that is true.