Mind over Matter, Love over Logic

I've spent enough time and energy on dating to know how the long-winded search for love works. You trudge through the first date, working your charm and presenting yourself as if interviewing for a job - if you want the job badly enough, your mind nervously goes into overdrive and exaggerates everything you do and say. If you don't really want the job, but you feel like you still might want it as a fallback, you still state your best qualities, but take on a demeanor that is relaxed and relatively uninvested, leaving the person on the other end of the "interview" either thoroughly impressed by your attitude or completely turned off. Afterward, you follow through with the text treatment - or the "follow-up" - for a few short weeks, and continue dating until one person either takes a step forward or waves their white flag and runs in the opposite direction.

As it turns out, I'm normally the one waving the white flag in surrender.

Relationships, to the dismay of many delusional hopeful, optimistic rom-com lovers, take work. It's a process that begins to feel like a second job (or perhaps a third or fourth, depending on your lifestyle), leading to a more disillusioned perspective on love than your 5-year-old, Cinderella-watching self would know what to do with. And as a result, we're utterly dumbfounded when we finally encounter a person who accomplishes something so mind-boggling, so absolutely unthinkable that we're stopped in our tracks: the realization of finally feeling "the zsa zsa zsu."

The saying goes that "opposites attract," and if that is in fact the case, then why are so many people surprised when they go through date after date seeking a manufactured connection with someone? The feeling of love is, inherently, an inexplicable emotional phenomenon. So vague, so ambiguous a concept, that the world's greatest creators of fine literature have spent their entire lives deciphering its meaning and its role in life and its everyday events. Such an intriguing thought, that bloggers like myself dedicate a wall in their bedroom to post-it notes questioning how relationships work (or perhaps that's just me?).

Finding myself in a head-scratching situation of my own, I can't help but question one thought-provoking idea about our lovers: Can you love someone you have nothing in common with?

Like any other chronic dater, I have a checklist of sorts laid out for when I meet someone. By my fantastical standard, they need to be effortlessly charming, alluring in the way that they speak, headed in a forward-moving direction in their life, and they need to have a grasp on my admittedly dry sense of humor. It's human nature - especially today - to put on the table all of your romantic requirements. Otherwise, by contemporary logic, it's like trying to run a brand-new, high-tech video game on a 1995 Macintosh computer: it just won't work.

But what happens, when you find someone who catches you by surprise; what happens when you discover a person who manages to make you smile and laugh, while all-at-once failing the system performance test you've put every other prospect through with the utmost caution? Is it possible, with all of today's neurotic dating tendencies, to leave your head in the dust, and act with your heart?

We've become so consumed by the idea of flawlessness in today's world that we sometimes forget to stop and consider what happiness really means to us; moreover, what it means to "settle" versus what it means to accept what we actually want. Does a person really fail to meet our ideals, or do they fail to meet the standards of the other players in your game of life? Sometimes, embracing love and all of its joys, means tossing your checklist in the trash with the rest of the waste.

Don't let others - or the pessimistic voices in your mind - tell you that you can't love someone. More often than not, those that walk through life alone are the same people who try to take control of love as if it is a horse that can be taken by the reins.

The next time your stomach flips and your heart races, consider one crucial thing: "Do I love this person based on my criteria, or someone elses'?"

If the answer is the former, then hold on tight, and for the sake of your own happiness, never let go.

Questions? Comments? Post below or send a tweet to @BrotherlyLover

Words you never said, in a text you never sent

Left alone in a dark room with nothing but your thoughts, you recount the things you might have done differently, and debate all of those unsaid words swirling through your mind like a tornado that never touched ground. One moment, you tell yourself you made the right decision, and that moving forward without the baggage is the best route. In another moment, you ponder whether that last text you sent – or rather, didn’t send, may have made the difference.

It’s a funny, funny world of communication we now live in.

Never has it been easier to interact with someone than it is today, and yet more and more, those words that we can feel slipping off the tip of our tongue still slide back into the back of our throat, thrust into an abyss of no return. Perhaps it’s because the choice to express emotion has been simplified to a text box and a “send” button, or perhaps it’s just because we don’t feel the need to take chances in the way we used to.

Finding myself in a bit of a predicament with my own texting experience, I received an out-of-the-blue message that left my eyebrow raised but my heart churning with excitement. It was the kind of text message you envision getting, but realistically convince yourself won’t happen. The text’s surface message was simple, but as most texts also are, complex in its hidden meaning. It goes without saying that no one judges a text based on its content as much as they do its context, and this was especially true of this case. My id dared me to indulge in the opportunity, but my ego saw me playing it safe and responding with words that I knew held no meaning, regardless of their context. The latter has left me contemplating how my love life might be different with a more ambitious response, with this case as well as the countless others that remain untold.

All of which begs the question of what you do with these texts that result in a racing heart and an apprehensive pair of thumbs; what you do with these hidden messages that lurk behind an actual message like a panther eager to pounce but suppressed by long-term tactics.

Our love lives are full of roads we’ve either bypassed or completely blockaded with “caution” signs and police sirens screeching with sounds of warning to steer you away from a desperate scenario. There are texts we ignore that could have developed into something more with a little more risk-taking, and conversations full of potential we intentionally lead down the path of simplicity out of basic anxiety. They’re all interactions with variables, with unrealized outcomes we may always be left to wonder about.

I once wrote a love letter to a person I was involved with, and found myself tempted to send it, knowing that the particular person appreciated handcrafted and heartfelt materials. I had the letter written, folded, and ready to go in an envelope, before something shouting deep within me sprang to consciousness and stopped my hand from slipping it into the mailbox. Sometimes, I wonder how that relationship would have evolved had I actually sent that letter. More recently, I consider how many more of these heart-protecting actions I’ve unknowingly taken, and particularly whether those words I’ve left unsaid in text messages have actually changed my life in ways I may never understand. Never has mankind had more opportunity to take a chance on someone, to put themselves out there with a few pecks from a twiddling thumb, and yet so infrequently do we take advantage of these opportunities to truly become close with someone.

It’s hard to determine whether an unsent text message (letter, email, whatever it may be) represents the life-altering scenario you envision in your mind, but it is nonetheless true that these represent chances not taken, and roads left unmapped. In some cases, it’s understandably just not worth it to take the chance, but as you’re driving down your road of mind-boggling love and infatuation, consider for a moment that your life is not limited to the roads laid out before you. As you drive yourself past these exits and pit stops, remind yourself that the road is your own creation, with a boundless array of unpaved roads left ahead of you that remain a mystery but hold the potential to be the most fruitful. Consider it a Columbus state of mind.

In the end, I beg this one thing of you: don’t leave yourself drowning in the words you’ve never said.

Have a question you want answered by Brotherly Lover? Send an email to brandon.baker@temple.edu or a tweet to @BrotherlyLover.

Stoking the fires of fate

"Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her. But once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game." - Voltaire

Fate. It's the one word that makes some cringe and others squeal with excitement at the prospect that their life is already predetermined, presumably in the best of ways. But if life is just a road map that we navigate to the same destination, how do we determine which choices are really the best ones?

Choices. Another striking word that evokes some of the most stressful anxiety from our minds. We ask ourselves the simplest of questions that lead to the most complex of situations: "Is he the one?"; "Do I choose him or my career?"; "Am I ready?"

Unfortunately, life does not provide us with a top-of-the-line GPS system to assure us that we're headed in the right direction. The choices we make are left solely to our own judgment, our own peace of mind.

I have been left contemplating where my life choices have taken me in the past year, what role I've been given as a result, and how my life may be different today had I taken a different unfamiliar route. On a deeper level, I'm left to consider whether fate, that elusive word that escapes all human comprehension, really does exist?

I don't doubt that we've all found ourselves in eerie predicaments at one point or another that have left us wondering this same question. You run into an old flame on the street against all odds; your trip to the coffee shop substantiates into an earth-shattering relationship with someone who happened to be sitting next to you; you find sparks with your co-worker at a new job you were initially skeptical of taking.

And of course, you imagine what direction your life would have taken had you not taken that new job, decided to go to the coffee shop that day, or taken that particular detour you did while walking on the street. Is it possible that, despite all of our efforts, strategies and boundaries we try to layout in our love lives, that our "destiny" is controlled by something ... dare I say ... supernatural?

I've never fancied myself the type to put faith into things I can't directly see or experience, but I believe I've stumbled into the territory of what I call a "closet fater." And really, what is so unfathomable about the idea of love being beyond the realm of logic? Anyone who loves their abusive boyfriend, their husband that they know is unfaithful, or that euphorically addictive but toxic person in their life can tell you that reasoning plays little role in the dynamics of such an emotion.

In that case, maybe it is not so much fate that drives our direction in life, so much as love itself. It isn't predestined, but it is likely to pull us in one direction over another. To believe in fate, ultimately, is to believe in love.

We may not have the choice of deciding who we love or whether that love blossoms into everything we want it to be, but we do have the comforting choice to believe in fate, in all of its otherworldly glory.

What Do You Do With a Broken Heart?

In the process of dealing with a break-up or flat-out rejection, you go through just about every state of mind you can possibly imagine. There’s the phase of pure anger, where you shatter your wine glass on the ground in pure rage. There’s the phase of denial, where you try and justify every word that has been said and every tiny action that can be analyzed. And of course, there’s that pure, simple and lingering phase of sadness of which I need not describe.

And perhaps what’s most unfortunate about it all, is this process never really comes to a halt, no matter how many times you experience it, or how logical you try to be. Your sensibilities don’t work in a love-struck world where, by its own nature, there is no such thing as “rational.”

What does it mean, then, that even with all of this “experience” we have, we still can’t learn to just move on?

It’s easy to tell yourself to “get back on the horse and try again,” and to move onward from all that is doom and gloom, but doing so is often a completely different story. Humankind prides itself on dwelling. “What don’t we dwell on?” is undeniably a much better question than the reverse.

What I’ve come to realize, however, is that rather than sinking in these feelings and letting them consume you (and boy do they consume), it eases the pain in the long run to tackle these feelings head on and – if at all possible – bypass them altogether.

You have the friends who will advise you to do this or that in the post-break-up process, and many of us do so accordingly. We “wait it out,” thinking that we’re being the bigger person by avoiding confrontation and talking out feelings. But when it comes down to it, these games of emotional politics do more harm than they do good. We need only look at the example of Washington for further proof of the damage political thinking can deal.

I don’t have the clear-cut answer to heartbreak; if I did I’d certainly have a much more solid business model than running a column on Blogger. But the advice I can give that will save pain in the long-term, is to stop running.

Stop running from those feelings that you don’t want to feel anymore. Stop running from the anger and the frustration that you feel for the person who broke your heart. Stop running from the bright light coming toward you, because doing that is the only thing holding you back from moving forward.

Love and heartbreak are not “black and white” subjects, and they surely are not emotions that any doctor or scientist can ever give you a solid solution to. No one can write you a prescription for a broken heart. In that very way, it just might be the worst disease to ever plague humanity. It’s everywhere, and it’s unavoidable.

But like The Black Death, you’ve got to warn the others and stay on-guard during the entire duration of the outbreak. But always keep in mind that living in fear of being struck by it is a worse poison than the harsh realities of love could ever be.