Greener pastures.....

Oh sure, now that I am happily (well mostly) part of a couple I can pontificate about how the single life is not too bad! But I am not going to. The single life is not, not too bad. It is pretty good. And fulfilling and very complete. For the record people are not half circles floating around waiting to find their perfect fits and so on( I cannot for the life of me remember where I read about that, but in those days, I used to feel like an incomplete square or triangle with all these semicircles).

We are fed this lie from the beginning. That there is someone out there made just for each one of us. That the default state is the state with that someone. And of course this is a very hetereonormative myth- the whole opposites attract, for every yin there is a yang and so on. Every princess in pink has a knight on a charger dashing up to meet her. And the single state is looked down on- the suffix un-attached to words, as if it were not as desirable. And of course folk lore and literature is rife with this element of undesirableness-  villains are mostly the lonely, unattached kinds  (Macbeth and his lady were an exception, then she went and killed herself to balance things out).

So the pursuit of happiness seems the pursuit of that elusive other- labeled the significant other. So much so that people spend a major portion of their lives looking and still looking. And all too often finding the wrong someone. And settling, adjusting, compromising , sacrificing peace of mind, material resources time, all to maintain that illusion of not being alone.

Which, if actually analyzed is the default state. After all one is born a singularity and except for special circumstances dies that way too. Every single instance of life is a unique event experienced by one alone. After all even if you had someone to see a sunset with, only you would feel it your unique way- the same applying to opera, a book, even life itself. For one’s life is just that- one’s own life. The stage where one is the star. Shared by other folk from time to time- but essentially a one-person act in its entirety.  Everyone else is supporting cast, with their own one-star plays where you may play the supporting role.

Oh yes the selfish gene dictates the need to pass it on- so the desire to mate is deeply ingrained.  But that is a physical necessity, not a mental state. The latter is socially imposed. And yet the real natural state is s looked down upon. And this is regardless of culture- despite some places being more individual-inclined than others.  

So why do we fall for this lie? Or let me wonder even more simply, why did I fall for it? And in the hunt for that someone- who by the way turned up when I decided to be me- this twist in the tale in totally incidental to the point I am making, (not some sort of lesson as in  “The Alchemist” or some such deeper philosophy- to the effect that the fairy tale ending is there and it can be yours for 19.99) – why did I tend to overlook just how completely awesome my life is, just by virtue of being my life. Which of course is not to say that the not-single state is any inferior to the prior single state, at least not in my case. It is awesome, just as the last was awesome too. What was not awesome was the fact that I did not appreciate the awesomeness for a long time. Yes, the grass is greener on the other side- and maybe in some cases it is a superior quality of grass. But it does not become better, just because it is on the other side.