You and I Both

A lot of girls are looking for a knight in shining armor or a stranger in a white hat.

I'm looking for a man in a powder blue tux.

It was back when Music Television was Music Television, and my older brother sat as he always did watching the latest music videos. He called me into the room, and I entered, begrudgingly assuming he'd beckoned me in order to insist I bring him a beverage.

"What?" I grumbled in my elementary school way.

"Look at this guy. Watch this."

I entered the room further and stood watching the screen.

He was in a bank, holding a piggy bank, clothed in a powder blue tux, and the cops in their riot gear started dance-fighting with him, and all the while he smiled and sang, even as they slammed him onto the hood of the cop car.

I remember thinking this man was amazing.

It wasn't until a few years later, as I discovered YouTube as a viable source to stalk my newfound favorite musician Jason Mraz, that I decided to actually watch his official music videos, and loaded one for a song I knew from his first album.

I smiled to myself, in my adolescent way, at his cuteness as he tried to woo the bank teller with his piggy bank, but it wasn't until he entered the frame in a powder blue tux that the memories came flooding back, that the connection was made that I'd seen this before. I'd held great feelings of respect and adoration for this man before I ever knew of him or wanted to know of him. I had know idea the significance of our first meeting until the second happened.

That's how it should be. He'll come before I expect him, I may not even recognize him for a while. He'll be there, a part of my life that is significant enough to have a memory, but vague enough to be buried under the dirty laundry from my science classes. And then the moment will be right, I'll have found him, perhaps not even aware he's the one, and one day it'll click that I've seen this before, I knew this before, and I just needed to remember.

A lot of girls are looking for a knight in shining armor or a stranger in a white hat.

I'm looking for a man in a powder blue tux.

It's a puzzle that's served us well.

When I was a kid I used to take all the puzzles out of the "game closet" next to our front door and spread them out on the floor of the front room (living room? family room? formal greeting room? Who knows what the "proper" name is). I'd put them in a large circle covering the majority of free floor space between our floral white couch and peach chairs. I'd dump the puzzles over, their pieces strewn in a pile, and once each puzzle was an empty slate I would begin.

Starting at the top of the circle I'd work my way clockwise, doing each puzzle as perfectly and quickly as I could. After making this common practice I began to pretend I was timing myself, and that this puzzle circle was my brainiac Olympics and I had to beat my personal best time. Eventually I added the more complex puzzles, telling myself once I got used to putting them together I could still hold record time.

Love is a puzzle depicting the sky. We each enter into life with our box of blue pieces, our quest being to find those whose pieces complete our picture. We stop and align our pieces with another, trying to make the puzzle work. But it's often hard to see how blue pieces fit without knowing if we're crafting the same picture. We spend an infinite amount of time trying one person's pieces only to discover those pieces that did fit don't build a picture; there are gaping holes or missing corners. Our sky is incomplete.

I'm sick of puzzles. I'm sick of waving my box about like a tin collecting alms, waiting for someone to think to try them out. I'm sick of finding matches that have more wrong than they do right, tired of extra pieces collecting dust in my box, through with packing up the puzzle again and moving around the circle to the next one.

I just want to finish it. I want to do what my grandparents have done and sit down, finish the puzzle, and glue it to a board to hang over the piano. I want to stop undergoing this task and behold it as art. I'm done with puzzles.

I read a few chapters in a book once that discussed an idea called 'flow.' It is, in essence, moments when a person is at the peak of their performance, whether that be music, sports, lecturing...when a person's task is so easily undertaken that it feels effortless, almost out of body, to be accomplishing it so perfectly with so little cognitive processing. The book also discussed how one cannot reach that peak, that flow, without stimulation. Practice. You're never going to have that perfect moment if you lie on the couch all day proclaiming boredom. As humans we're equipped to learn, to do. We're most satisfied in a bored state when doing something constructive: reading books or newspapers, cleaning, crafting. It's effort that leads us to achieving moments of excellence.

Won't I be more pleased when the puzzle finally works if I've been trying at it for so long? Won't it mean more to have worked endlessly for it?

Pop always says he prayed two years before he met Mom. Mom "dated" 64 guys before she met Dad.

Eight months and five guys down...

Here's to finishing the puzzle..

I'd Like to Say We've Tasted Love

One thing I've come to notice is how life isn't what you expect. Meaning that a lot of the benefits/realizations/friendships I've received have come from moments when I didn't expect anything of the type to take place.

I could go with the laundry list, but I think I'll stick with what's relevant this instant.

You see, when my old pal Ellen (not the one with the talk show, though she is planning on chopping her hair off) invited me down to her home for the day, I was expecting to trade war stories of my single life and her newly married life. I was expecting to rehash and revamp our friendship. I was expecting to get to know her husband a bit more.

I wasn't expecting what I got.

(Yes, I got all that I expected, but there was something else. And it went like this.)

Ellen is one of two long time good friends who are married, and the only one I have "hung out with" since the name-change. Tonight was my first experience as the third wheel to a married couple; it wasn't awkward, that's not what I'm saying. I just...

There's something different about love bonded by marriage when it's not your grandparents or you parents or the spunky young couple that moved into the ward when you were thirteen. There's something different about seeing a peer--someone you passed notes to in Junior High, someone who went to your first Jason Mraz concert with you (and the Jonas Brothers...), someone who fangirled over the same low-level boyband that never got off the ground--there's something different when someone who was once like you is...

Complete.

I guess I just never really realized what marriage--and love--looked like until this late afternoon, in the backseat watching them out of the corner of my eye interact. I'm not from a broken home: I've had good models on what a successful relationship is, but it took my parents some 27 years to get where they are. Ellen and Sean are at seven months (in two days). This is what those 27 years looks like at the starting gate. This is what it would look like for me.

And I realized I haven't had that. I haven't had that flawless comfort and banter, that connection that still buzzes in the dead air between the passenger seat and the driver's. I haven't been linked like that. And it's not a thing that magically happens when an I Do is spoken or whatever it is that takes place at the alter in the temple takes place. I'm sure that helps, but the link comes before that. The love comes before that.

And as much as I've wanted it and been willing to give it, as much as I've tried to make it happen, I haven't had that yet.

And that's what I needed today for. That's why I had to gird up my little car and head into the valley. That's why Ellen invited me. That's what I needed to get that I didn't expect.

Every "relationship" I've had hasn't been that, not yet. And it doesn't mean I'm in the wrong or failing. It's just suddenly I'm aware there's more to be looking for than I have been, and that yes love is hard, but it doesn't have to be as difficult as I'm making it. It doesn't have to hurt as much as I convince myself it needs to. When it's right I should be happy; without having to talk myself into it. If it hurts, if it feels as disgusting as it does right now then it's time to walk away.

It's safe to walk away, knowing that the day will come when I arrive somewhere expecting to order an ice cream or interview for a job or whatever it is, and I'll walk away with something else. I'll walk away with someone else who won't have to hesitate in taking a risk and chasing me and who wants to include me in his life and surround himself in mine, who will have the faith in what he feels and the trust that God wouldn't let him make such a drastically wrong decision, but that sometimes we have to make a choice before He nods His head or guides our eyes in the right path. Sometimes it takes the exercising of our flawed reasoning to activate the divine hand of our Heavenly Father; sometimes we have to take that blind step in the dark and exert our efforts before He intercedes His. And someday, somewhere, there will be someone who realizes all of this in as narrow of a window as I do, and together we'll see more clearly. And together we'll progress.

And I guess that's love. And that's what I'm looking for.

The Modern Romance

aka The Only Way Men Talk to Me

I'm not really sure if/how this will benefit anyone; it's just happened too many times for me to ignore it's a trend.

So I'm going to address it. Obscurely and vaguely via the interweb.

Huzzah.


As I said, I have experienced this phenomena on several occasions, the most recent lending me to believe that either this is what courtship is now, the boys in my area all think the same, or I give a general vibe that I should be approached in this specific manner.

What manner is this, you ask?

Let me give you the outline for The Modern Romance aka The Only Way Men Talk to Me:

Step One: Meet me in person.

Here it is discovered better than any other time that my awkwardness is charming to a tolerable degree. Something about me must be deemed pleasant before moving on to

Step Two: Friending me on Facebook.

Facebook is Facebook. That's what it's there for, is matching my face with the "book" upon which it is splayed. There are varying ways to attempt this, and for the sake of making this post a little more exciting, I will give you an example of which conditions the friending has, to my experience, taken place under.

1. Dude found me that very night.
2. Dude commented on a shared event, I "liked" his comment to enable his finding me, which worked.
3. Dude found me after I added a friend of his.
4. Dude waited the three day decorum time slot then added me.

Granted, aside from one of the four, I'm not necessarily 100% as to how I was located, though these options are safe because, well, none of them knew my last name.

Bonus fun fact: in The Modern Romance aka The Only Way Men Talk to Me, your profile picture of you and Jason Mraz (who to any non-Mrazfan looks like just another guy) does not threaten them into avoiding you under the belief you already have a relationship.

Which is a little depressing to consider that people don't think I stand a chance with Jason Mraz. 15 years isn't that big a deal.

It's more my religious beliefs and his veganism that are problematic.


Step Three: Private message me.

There is different decorum for this as well, which, surprise surprise, I'm going to elaborate on; based on my experience: (please note the following steps are interpreted as coming from the man's mind)

1. Give it some breathing room, we're just talking, it's cool.
2. Have my number.
3. Cascade dumpsters full of compliments upon her glorious visage.
4. Ask generic question. See if she has plans.

Step Four: Give me your number.

Inadvertently, the next logical step is to extend our budding relationship beyond the confines of Facebook; mainly make it so upon contacting each other we are immediately notified as to when the other has responded, rather than being lenient on when we or the other check Facebook.

1. We have built a foundation. Here's my number. (At this point I assume foundation will continue to be established via text.)
2. Have my number. (The ball is now in my court entirely. Well played.)
3. Is it too soon to text? You're a glorious person with an amazing laugh. (I'm kind of choking on the compliments, but they make me feel nice.)
4. Wait almost a day to respond to her last message, whether intended or not. Just cut to the chase and give her your number. (I...I don't know how to start this conversation. Do I respond to your inbox message or just text you? Or both?)

Step Five: Ask me out.

The timing of the asking is varied, anywhere from about a week later to that very night in about ten minutes time.

And, naturally, this step ends in a variety of ways; maybe we hit it off really well but I'm just not interested romantically. Maybe I had a gut feeling to steer clear of a relationship with you, regardless how nice and cool you are. Maybe we went out a couple times and you stopped talking to me. Maybe I still haven't texted you so you haven't asked me out yet.

Step Six: Repeat.

Because yes, guys are interested in me, and I'm interested back. But either I change my mind or they change their mind and in the end we all end up single.

And that, my friends, is The Modern Romance.