It's a good thing nobody wanted to fall in love with me in Columbus, because I was on the edge. (You missed your chance, Beth.) There I was, surrounded by intelligent people with similar interests, and even though most of them didn't live anywhere close to me and apparently spent a lot more time listening to NPR than I do, I could barely bring myself to care. I fell in love with the exotic feel of the whole experience, and I felt the pull to transfer that infatuation to a person.
In one of my favorite posts from his site Stuff Christians Like, Jon Acuff writes about similar feelings in the context of missions trips. The phenomenon extends beyond missions trips to any intense shared experience. Besides the recent arts festival example, I have been to a few conferences in which the group did a lot of communal soul-searching and heart-baring, and I got obliquely asked out in consequence. (Digression: one of the things that turned me off to this oblique request was that this man had previously expressed in a sharing time that a major goal of his future life was to ask more women out. Thank you for making me a check mark on your list, buddy. I feel so special.)
I have certainly heard the siren call of heightened emotional situations. The danger, of course, is that life is not always emotionally intense. In most lives, there are long stretches of boring in there. Nobody is going to be the same kind of shiny in those times as they were at the conference, or at the festival, or on the trip. And does anybody keep in touch on even a casual level with half of the way cool people that you meet in these sorts of situations?
I have my romantic side, but I don't trust it. Look up "romance" in the dictionary. Here, I'll do it for you. Notice that romance, by definition, lacks a firm base in everyday reality. It's all well and good to throw around little romantic gestures, but they aren't what get you through life. Some days you will wake up with bad breath, or come down with a flu, or just be really irritable for no good reason, and romance won't be anywhere around. Love might (should) be, but love is more about sacrifice than showing off. It could be legitimately argued that there is a place for showing off, a place for theatrical flair, but it shouldn't hold the primary place.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with drinking in a heightened emotional landscape. I just don't want to get drunk on one.
5 comments:
My interest is piqued! WHO?
Asking more women out is good if you are searching to find someone you can be compatible with and enjoy. You can't always figure that out at first glance or first date, or even at conferences. I think it was a good goal.
Beth, I believe I did just compare emotional highs to alcohol use. Suffice it to say that I can hold my liquor better than I can hold my emotional highs. (That makes it sound like I'm way more hard-core of a drinker than I am.)
Trudy, I don't expect there is any man on the entire planet who could figure out at first glance or first date whether or not he was up to the challenge that is me, and I do appreciate that men have it rougher than women in some ways (although to varying degrees, things are rough all around). And perhaps his goal wasn't really just "ask more women out" but "ask more women I am interested in out instead of shutting down possibilities before they open." Yeah, that would be a good goal. If only he had actually said it that way his future inquiry wouldn't have been so insulting. I'd still have said no (or rather, avoided answering the indirect question), since I found this particular guy really irritating on many levels, none of them potentially attractive. But I might have been nicer about it. Way to look for the positive, friend.
But do you see that you did eliminate a person just based on the conference input. Maybe you also couldn't figure out at first impression whether you were up to the challenge that was HIM.
Just asking :)
Yes, yes, yes, Trudy, I am not married because I'm too picky. I get it.
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