Sorry that it has been so long. Between the network being down here at the apt since Thursday, being gone for the weekend, and generally not having any time at all while I was home to do much more than be with the fam, I am just now getting back to this.
So, let’s start with the Cliff’s Notes of the comments. Mindy says stay true and step out. Ben says ,“don’t worry, thomas. have faith that some girl will see you for who you are and love you and marry you. trust God, it’ll happen.” Marcus says that even the experts say they don’t know wtf is the right thing to do. He goes on with wisdom beyond his years by stating (pretty much) that if things were fair, then “every girl would be all up ons”. Marc says don’t throw rocks at girls and burn their houses down with candles that spell their name (my paraphrase). C-to-the-a-to-the-llum sez buy a puppy and go to a strip club (note this fortune). Chad says don’t listen to him and talk about computers all the time.
All too often I’ve heard guys relate how they pretty much have no idea how they got hooked up with their significant other. This helps me none.
For you see that I feel that I have done my best to stay true to myself in my pursuit of women only to get in return ::matt foley::JACK SQUAT!::matt foley::
Everyone pretty much says that you have to be yourself. Exactly who that person is is a highly debated topic. During either ENGR111 or 112 we had to do these personality-ish surveys. Not the Keirsey one, different, more expensive ones. They dealt more with how to communicate with co-workers, the best management environment for you to work in, etc. They made some distinctions between a natural behavior and an adapted one. For example, their program drew the conclusion that my tendancy to motivate others is less a natural one and more an adapted one, meaning that my natural tendancy to get your butt in gear is less than the tendancy that you might actually come into contact with.
So in taking this notion of natural and adapted, I tried to extrapolate that if everyone is capable of doing pretty much anything (say to the generic extremes both very, very good and bad things), then what really does define us? If we are defined by our actions, and in certain circumstances we can do atrocious things (the Holocaust, for example), then we are defined by nothing because we can do everything.
Can everyone reading this can assume that the real and true Thomas can, under the proper conditions, be charming enough to get some girl’s phone number? We can all agree that this action would be an adapted behavior, correct? Something that Thomas was always capable of. Then anything else that Thomas is capable of would then be part of the true Thomas. Doesn’t that truly muddy the water of who Thomas really is? Doesn’t that essentially make Thomas undefined?
I think that Max would argue that the true Thomas is independant of outward appearance. Which I would say is only partially true. Do my glasses define me? Would I be any different if I wore contacts? Would I be more appealing if everyone could see my eyes better to try and read them? Do my shorts define me? Do my t-shirts? Am I a fundamentally different person if I shaved everyday and everyday wore business casual? Perhaps business casual wouldn’t denote a fundamental shift in my being, but I would hotly argue that it would indicate a paradigm shift. At the very least an acceptance of a new stage in life. I would argue that that outward sign correlates directly to an inward acceptance. Acceptance that things can and never will be the save again. Letting go of things of the past. Fundamental changes in priorities. Just plain fundamental changes. People might argue that the clothes don’t make the man, but I am a firm believer that clothing maintains a direct relationship to personal and fundamental things of that person. If a girl wears flip flops instead of heels. The kind of glasses she wears. How much makeup she has on. Whether she has her nails done. Whether she’s had a peticure. How conservatively she dresses. How her hair is done. I’m not exactly sure where I’m going with this. But I bet that there’s one of you out there that thinks that I have my girl picked out to a tee. ;) And maybe I do. And maybe I don’t.
Maybe that’s why I hate this game so much is that I just don’t think that I’ll ever win. That’s pretty much what everybody said wasn’t it? Just wait for it. You say, “If you build it, they will come”. And I say, “build what?”. And you say “If you build it, they will come”. And then I have to build a baseball field in the middle of my corn field.
I’ve tried playing the game every way that I know how. I’ve even tried playing the game by not playing at all (Would you like to play a game of chess?). Nothing seems to change. So if I am so infintely picky, and we then assume that this ficticious woman is also infinitely picky, then can anyone figure out the probability of hookup of two infinitely picky people? I look at my odds in CS and I look at them now, and I just give up. Sorry, Ben, I can’t trust and I’ve lost [some] faith.
Sleep awaits. Maybe someday my prose will get less disjointed and generally better overall…
