The Diversified Love Life

Now, you may be afraid I'm going to launch into a rant about the benefits of sleeping around or, shall we say multitasking, with members of the opposite sex. You know me so well! But fear not, for I'm not advocating anything of the kind with this title. Let me explain what I mean by diversified love life.

By this point in life most of us have been in love once; maybe you met them in college or have dated them since high school, but there has been somebody to scale your walls and get under your skin. If you're not on the marriage train, or close to it, then you have broken up. (My condolences.) As one of the masses who has loved and lost that first person, I know something about young love: it exists in its own world.

Young love is a self-sustaining ecosystem in which the lovers don't need anyone else. Friends fade, individual hobbies die, and that hip-sewing surgery is successfully completed (Though this does complicate pants-purchases.). What this means for a break-up, though, is that you not only lose your lover, you also lose your best friend, partner-in-crime, confidant, and playmate. Which leaves you more alone than a BO-ridden teenager at a high school dance.

So how do we avoid this fate in the future? We diversify! As we enter new relationships we actively seek to set up our own life separate from our partners.

Think of people as little squares of crepe paper. Now, draw a shape in your mind that represents your emotional, social, and physical needs; any shape will do. And imagine all the people in your life as little squares of paper. The goal in life is to get your needs (represented in my mind by a porcupine on a unicycle) covered through friends, family, lovers, coworkers, etc. So as new people enter into your life their little square of paper is pasted onto your shape. No single person will fit your shape exactly, but they can contribute to covering it.

Applied to love, this idea means that no person can be your everything, despite your first relationship. So we date and love the people who are most crucial to us, and have friends and family to fill in the gaps.

I know this is how things evolve...but what would you say is the more sweet: variegated love or all-consuming?

Shades of Gray

It is said that people get softer as they age, that the fire they once burned with fades and that they, in a word: settle. But I think that this perception falls short of explaining what is actually happening to people. Over the last few years, the lessons I have learned that have made me a better person all had to do with seeing the shades of gray in life: forgiving those who've wronged you, pardoning the amoral, using sporks, etc. I don't mean losing a sense of what is "right" or "wrong," everyone will always have an opinion on that. I mean coming to acknowledge that there are more than 2 answers to any situation.

When I was younger, I either hated or loved everything. There didn't exist a middle ground. I hated smokers; I hated stupid people; I hated lies. Never mind that some stupid people are kinder and more impactful than many an arrogant smart person. It didn't matter that lies could save other's pain. Everything was so easily boxed in my mind. And I think it's part of "growing up" to lose those boxes and mellow out about things. It doesn't involve liking the things you hate, but it does require an acceptance that: 1) people have value despite their perceived negatives, and 2) the way you live your life isn't right for everyone else. How could it be with the staggering variety of people in the world?

Maybe it's an American thing, dividing the world into polarities: good/bad, light/dark, negative/positive. Even in language we operate with a mathematical form of logic. American English is the only language in the world where double negatives make positives. For example, "Can't not" means that you can. In any other language the double negative only reinforces the negativity of the phrase. Only in English can two wrongs make a right. Perhaps, it's that idea of math that causes our culture to look at things with such polarity...

So, yes, I guess you soften. But I like to think of it as recognizing the gradient in all things. Black, White, and a million shades of gray.