cheating made easy. that’s america for ya…or maybe just human nature.

i don’t think i’m ever gonna get married.

now, there are a number of reasons for this, but the one that flashes like a neon headline in my mind is that i’m so afraid of marrying someone who will cheat on me. over the past few years, most of my idealized conceptions of love vanished, and it is difficult now to locate the idealist in me. i know she’s there, hidden and buried somewhere deep within, and though she may never rear her ugly head with her rose-colored glasses again, i know she’ll never really die. every girl, no matter how jaded and damaged, wants to believe in love above all else.

irene sent me the link to this time article today, and i was truly appalled at its contents.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1907542,00.html
it is basically about a website that gives you an iphone app that has people pay $50 to sign up to participate in an extramarital affair. it’s basically eharmony.com for married people. the advertised benefits are that it eliminates the paper trail since it’s from your phone so that your spouse is less likely to catch you. ugh. the tagline for the webiste is: “life is short. have an affair.” UGH. they qualify that they are merely the platform and don’t think cheating is a good thing. um…WHAT? you’re creating a website designed for the express purpose of helping people cheat, yet maintaining that cheating is not a good thing? ridiculous. at least exhibit a little consistency. if it’s not a good thing, why promote it? to capitalize on the temptations that people have is NOT an acceptable answer, especially when they give a moral response concerning whether cheating is good or bad.

this grates against my most core principle, i.e., commitment, and seriously makes me not only upset but fearful. as the world grows increasingly technologically savvy, it seems that there are more and more outlets to secretly do whatever you want to do. again, this abundance of choices leads to horrifying possibilities that one may never have seriously considered, were it not for the ease and accessibility of it all. yes, it may cross everyone’s mind at one point or another, but to act upon that is an entirely different matter. the chance that someone will act upon something they know is wrong increases with the diminished possibility that someone will catch them. i seriously wonder how we’d all live if we felt like nobody would ever catch us. scary thought.

now here’s when it’s gonna sound emo and self-bashing, but honestly i guess it boils down to the fact that i KNOW that i suck and that i’m crazy and that i don’t think i’m great or fun enough to attract someone to me forever. yes, for a period of time, i can put my best foot forward. but it doesn’t last. i am who i am at the end of the day, and if given the chance, i would never choose me to spend the rest of my life with. i’m crazy, untrusting, cynical, messy, scatterbrained, and the list goes on. i really would not choose me. so why would i want anyone else to?

and even worse is that, beyond these insecurities that i already have about myself, business at things like this friggin website is booming and making it that much easier and more socially acceptable for people to engage in this appalling behavior. sigh.

so yes. perhaps i will expound on some other reasons later. but to add to my already long list of reasons why i will not marry, here’s to ashleymadison.com. i’d like to give your creator a friggin piece of my mind.

choice.

don’t dream too far
don’t lose sight of who you are

every so often we long to steal
to the land of what-might-have-been
but that doesn’t soften the ache we feel
when reality sets back in

don’t wish
don’t start
wishing only wounds the heart.

whew. liking something i wrote enough to publish it is becoming increasingly difficult (even though i only have three readers, heh heh). i decided to just give it a rest — that search for the perfectly written entry — and just write some random thoughts out. take a page outta carol’s book =)

something i’ve been thinking about all semester is whether having choices is a positive luxury or a negative one. past generations didn’t have the benefit of making whatever decisions they wanted to make. they were limited in their job selections so the vast majority basically became blue-collar workers in american society. some just committed to marry due to parental suggestions, and they stuck with it regardless of romantic interest.

however, in our day and age, our society is presented with SO many choices. (obviously, this is not a blanket statement over all american citizens, but more geared towards the middle class demographic of which i am a part.) if we’re unhappy with our jobs, we can get new ones in a different field. if we’re unhappy with our majors, we fill out a form and try out another one. if we’re unhappy with a relationship, we break up — and our appalling divorce rate testifies to and validates it.

basically, if we’re unhappy, there’s always a way out.

when i met up with pastor min, he was saying how my definition of love is commitment. when some people say they want love, they mean they want to have that genuine, authentic feeling, that romantic connection, and that is the deepest desire of their hearts. while i think that it would be amazing if something as ephemeral as feelings could last or be relied upon, i don’t believe they are reliable in the least, and i think that commitment is of far greater value than such transient feelings. knowing that hardships are imminent but committing anyways — this, from my perspective, is of infinitely more worth than the tenuous basis of craving a mere emotion.

however, i think i am practical to a fault, and this value i place on commitment stems from that. this pragmatism has drained much joy from my life because i have lost the capacity to dream. if something is not an attainable goal, why waste the heart and mind thinking about and pining for it? i used to take this practicality as a positive attribute, but i think it has resulted in a permanent establishment of the cynic in me. i constantly wonder if it’s possible to be realistic without being cynical.

so to return to my question of whether choice is good or bad: when are you exercising the positive aspects of choice, and when are you abusing choice so you can avoid what you don’t want? when does that point occur where reneging on a commitment becomes acceptable because the alternative would be disastrous? i think i fall too much on one end of the extreme where i think all commitments should be binding and there should be no quitting point, and i used to think that this was a good thing. but maybe i’m wrong and you should get out if you feel like you’ll be miserable forever. i just have this mentality that nothing’s doomed so it seems like a giving-up mentality, but maybe that IS being realistic. oy my mind. this semester has screwed with me a LOT. i feel all messed up in the brain.

anyhow. this was all over the place and had no conclusion. but HEY better than nothing =)

also. i am sweating. it takes me forever to fall asleep in this heat, preventing sleep from gracing me and therefore causing me to stay up later, think longer, and wonder more. i don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing, but i suppose it’s better than being mindless.

SO here’s to another sleepless night of pondering questions with no answers. good NIGHTTTT.