I have a raging egomaniac I try to keep caged up in myself. If I’m not vigilant, she shoots out of me like the alien in the thriller preview of that alien movie that I never ever wanted to see. So I can understand how romantic it would be to believe in The One, the only perfect other half in this world for me, my destiny. The reality, though, is profoundly more beautiful than the fantasy of God as my personal matchmaker.
If there were, for the sake of argument, just ONE particular person that God/the universe/stars-uncrossing created for me to find and love, the possibility follows that I might miss this person, not recognize this person at a crucial moment, or lose this person somehow. Then, I should be devastated. In fact, people believing this premise to be true, do feel devastated when any of those events seem to come to pass.
But time goes on, and we learn to love again, maybe even feel this sensation of finding our destiny and being the center of the universe again. This is possible, because The One is a myth - not because you were wrong about the last One! Remember applying for college and stressing out about making the right choice? It turned out that there was no right or wrong choice. Each college would have set your life in a new direction, and they all would have been great. An education is an education.
Love is love no matter who you love. Love isn’t a chest that can only be unlocked by a heaven-sent, custom-fitted key. Love is a part of you, of all humanity, and it makes us worth perpetuating in spite of the bad things we do. I think mankind comes out better as a whole in this worldview, and as individuals, we don’t have to stress out so much about nitpicking on someone’s faults or passing some random number birthday alone.
(Shoutout to Rodolfo at MIT procrastinating his PhD by talking out blog ideas with me! Te extraño aca.)
