obsession

A few years ago, while writing my online journal, I was a part of a collaboration effort called "The Fugue".  The Fugue was a collection of online journallers who would be challenged each month with a particular topic or question on which to write.  One such project was the following:

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Obsession

Not just in the Fatal Attraction kind of way.  What do you long for?  What do you believe you need to make your life complete?  Is there someone who you would love to just spend a minute, an hour, a lifetime with and that would make your life complete?  What are you striving for in life?

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My answer was perhaps one of the most difficult, revealing, and honest things I ever wrote:

obsession
"breath, echoing the sound
time starts slowing down
sink until I drown
I don't ever want to make it stop
and it keeps repeating
will you please complete me?
never be enough
to fill me up"
[Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor), "Please"]

I've thought long and hard about this one, or perhaps I should say I've tried, long and hard, to think about this one.  The simple, obvious answer keeps storming out to the foreground.  The answer that anyone who's read my journal regularly can undoubtedly see spelled out before them already.  It sits there with this cat-that-ate-the-canary look on its face and it dares me to come up with something more clever.  It dares me to waggle my finger in other directions.  It dares me to deny and mislead, to conceal that a man as complex as I could ever be so incredibly foolish at heart, so simple, so infantile.  I want to understand myself, that's the point of these pages, and yet I don't want to be so infantile, so simple, so foolish.  I don't want to be so very transparent.  Ever since I saw it posted on other pages earlier this month, I've tried to think of other things.  I do have many obsessions... I have an "addictive personality"... but...

There are a lot of things in life that bring me pleasure, and most of them fairly simple things.  And I pursue them.  I obsess over them.  I become addicted to them.  For a time.  And then, just like a new CD you've played to death and gotten sick of hearing, they get put away just as quickly as I'd adopted them and are only occasionally seen again.

I love playing D&D, for instance.  I've played it since I was 9 years old.  Almost two full decades now.  And I've loved it.  But I could give it up if I wanted.

I love computers and computer games.  I work computers in the day and come home to eagerly sit in front of another at night.  But I could give it up if I needed.

I love my journal.  I love exposing my thoughts to the world.  Whenever I have something to write I can't wait to read the finished page.  But if I didn't find the time, I could just stop writing.  I've considered it many times already.
 
And there's been crud (a fast paced game played on a snooker table)... there's been Everquest...  there's Nine Inch Nails... some days I listen to the same NIN CD over and over and over and over and over...  chess...  Mah Jongg...

But it none of these things feel like I couldn't live without them.  These things aren't on my mind every day when I awake, or every night when I drift off.  These things do not sit there, lurking in my mind, somehow behind everything I do in some obscure way if I'm brave enough to dig deep and if I'm strong enough to admit it to myself.

And yes, there's my whole control issue.  I've talked about that so many many times.  There is the control issue.  But...

And I know where it all began.  She always "wore the pants" in my family.  Even from her wheelchair, my mother ran our household.  She did a damn fine job of it too.  She kept it all together, when her body was falling apart.  Life pushed down hard on her and she pushed back.  She kicked the darkness till it bled daylight.  She went down fighting.  And she showed a spirit of determination so strong that it continues to motivate me to this day, and will for all my life.

But she was also demanding.  She could be hard to please at times.  And then there was that good dose of Catholic guilt that was injected into my child-mind.  I felt like life owed her so much more... or like I owed her so much more.  I wanted to be the shining point of light.  I wanted to make it right.  I wanted to be her little angel.  Hell, I wanted to be the second coming of christ so I could heal her.

But I'm not going to sit here in a boo-hoo-victim-of-a-difficult-childhood pose.  I don't know if I've ever met someone who hasn't had a difficult childhood in some way or other.  You take your knocks and you grow up.  In so very many ways, I had things quite well.  I was always loved.  I was always provided for.  I was never abused.  Besides, it only started there.  Yes, I wanted her approval, and many times I got it, but then came the others.

Then there came every young girl or woman I was ever infatuated with from the time I was 13 onward.  I don't need to have them.  I don't need to love them.  I don't need to enter into relationships with them all.  I just need their "ok".  That's it.  I need them to see me, to get to know me, and to decide they like me.  It's that simple really.  And it's that hard.  It's so incredibly fucking hard.

I started my written journal because I wanted to explore myself?  I wanted to be around the girls in the coffee shop.  I started my online journal because I wanted to express myself and get things off my chest?  I've always hoped that some woman reading this would fall in love with me.  I gritted my teeth, gulped down some Advil and sat through work yesterday because I was dying to see that movie with my female co-worker when I had no idea what it was about?  Or because I saw the opportunity to make one more friend?  No.  I stuck it out because I needed this one more woman to like me.  I fell asleep wondering what it would be like to have her head lying gently on my chest, and woke wondering what she'd say to the other girls over a coffee and how it might or might not help put me into their good graces too.

What do you long for?  What do you believe you need to make your life complete?

I don't know that anything will ever leave me feeling truly satisfied.  No matter how much approval I might meet with, I'd always meet someone new.  I can never tire of them, because each one is new and unique.  There is no "figuring" it all out.  There is no end.  There is no final understanding you can come to that can be applied in each case like some grand mathematic principle.  They cannot be "conquered" somehow.  It cannot be put to rest.  It... will... never... end.

Is there someone who you would love to just spend a minute, an hour, a lifetime with and that would make your life complete?

I'd love to spend one minute with every female I've ever met.

I'd love to spend an hour with every girlfriend I've ever had.

And I'd love for my mother to be alive again and for the rest of my life.

I've thought at times there are women with whom my life might feel complete if only I could spend the rest of my existence with them... but it's not the truth.  There is one whom I sometimes wonder about now, one with whom I wonder if I might like to spend the rest of my life... but even she would not make it complete.  Because no matter how much she loved me, it would not be enough.  It would bring me moments of happiness, but not a lifetime.

What are you striving for in life?

It wavers.  It shifts and changes with the passing seasons.  I'd like to design a role-playing game and see it converted into a computerized one.  I'd like to write a book, or publish my journal as one.  I'd like to teach again.  I'd like to travel.  I'd like to run my own company some day.

But for tomorrow, mostly I'd love to accidentally walk in on a conversation at work when it's just the girls and discover them talking about me in kind words.  I want to hear one say "if I were single...".  And I want them to giggle shyly and look embarrassed when they realize I'm there in the doorway.

And for the men who read this... you can think me foolish, noble, crazed, pathetic... it doesn't matter to me anyway.

And for the women... if you feel I'm "pathetic", please don't bother to break my heart by telling me.  Don't even joke.  And if you think me "sweet", you could feel free to pass it on but while I will undoubtedly smile and feel the most wonderful little warm feeling for just a second...*deep sigh*... try not to be too disappointed that it will... "never be enough to fill me up"

I wanted it to be something different.

I wanted it to be something grand.

Save the whales.

Feed the poor.

Found a new religion.

Run for election.

Cure cancer.

Or even just invent a better lightbulb.

I wanted it to be something impressive and noble.

But it's not.

one bad apple

"The trouble with being an activist is you end up like Eve and you get kicked out of the Garden of Eden. You know, Eve was the first person who thought for herself. 

And she still gets a bad rap. I named my daughter after her."

[Susan Sarandon]

I obviously don't understand this whole Creationism thing.

Coming up in a Catholic school, I was taught the "creation story": Adam, Eve, God, the snake, the apple, Cain, Abel, etc etc.  We never spent a lot of time on it, but it was certainly covered once or twice.  However, like much of the dogma hammered into our impressionable minds, the whole point of the story was largely lost on us.  We were usually told the stories, and left to figure out the supposed point ourselves.

You see, as it was explained to me, it went pretty much like this:

Adam and Eve are standing around.  Tree of Life/Knowledge nearby with lovely apples (or pomegranites or whatever).  God says, "hey, don't eat the fruit, and I'll be back in a jiffy."  God buggers off.  Snake shows up and goes, "say, you guys should have some apples." "Why, what do the apples do?"  "Well, they are the fruit of knowledge.  If you eat them, you'd know everything god does.  You'd be gods too."  "Cool, sounds good."  Munch munch.

Next thing couples are having sex, women are punished by having menstrual cycles, and I'm not sure what man's punishment is, I mean, sure no multiple orgasms, but we can still pee standing up.  And everyone has to be born with this original sin on their head, made to beg forgiveness through baptism for what some couple did a few thousand years back.

I think we got the shaft on this one.

I mean, it's not like I could point it out in a Catholic grade school, but on hearing this story I thought, "I'm siding with the snake."

(Oh, I'm going to hell for that one!  Somewhere far far away, some Catholic somewhere is about to read this and pray for my soul.  Hahahahaha!  But back to me and the snake...)

See, here's how I basically saw it, after it was explained to me:

Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God creates Man, in his own image, but imperfect.  He must have meant to make him imperfect, because he himself was perfect and couldn't have simply cooked up a bad batch - not possible.  So obviously he meant us to be fuck-ups.  Being omniscient, he knew we'd be fuck-ups.  He made us to be.  Then he sticks the new couple of fresh fuck-ups in front of the Tree of Life, which he knows they will be tempted to eat from, hell, he knows they will eat from, because he knows everything, and goes somewhere that he can't see them (wherever omnipotent, omnipresent gods go in order to turn their back on their doomed followers) to provide them the opportunity to prepetrate the grand fuck-up.  Where exactly that is that he went I don't know, because if he is omnipresent, no such place exists, but in some bizarre chicken-egg scenario let's assume Mr Perfect created one.  So he runs off to turn his back on his favorite project.  Mr Snake comes along with a tempting, and reasonable-sounding offer.  Why should god be the only one who knows everything?  Selfish bastard wants to keep it to himself!  Why can't you have the knowledge?  Sounds like a pretty good, so they dig in.  God comes back in time to give them a good chewing out and puts the smack-down on their descendants right to this day.

I'm thinking, what a terrible tale!  What's the point of that?  Here's one for you:  I grab something the cat is not supposed to eat but I know that a cat would love.  I grab the cat and cram it into his mouth.  Then I pull the tab on a big ole can of whoop-ass and put the cat in a world of hurt for eating this stuff.  And the cat's reaction should be to (a) beg my forgiveness for having chowed down on it, and (b) to love, fear, and respect me.  The fear part I can see.  That part makes sense.  He should definitely fear me.  I'm a sadistic prick who is far bigger and stronger than he, and I behave in erratic ways he doesn't understand.  But where the love, respect, and begging for forgiveness part is supposed to come from, I'm not quite sure.

Now in spite of all the glaring inconsistencies, I suppose the point of the whole thing is that we were arrogant to take the fruit.  It was disobedient of us to be so ambitious as to think we were able to be gods, and that one part does make some sense.  Mankind's biggest failing is in his arrogance.  We think ourselves outside of the rest of the world, above it somehow.  We act like we are watching this wonderful play being presented for us and don't realize we're actors too.  We are not above nature.  We are not outside it.  This "control" we think we have over the world is just an arrogant work of bad fiction.  Tell me who's in charge the next time a tornado hits your trailer park.  And long after we've wiped ourselves off this planet, be it through man-made plague, global warfare, nuclear holocaust, or burning a hole in the ozone with our reckless pollution, life will go on without us.  It doesn't need us.  The owls and the mice would be much happier without us coming along to mess up their little ecosystem, and the see-saw pendulum of Mother Nature is going to swing back and clock us in the head any time now (pardon the multiple puns).

But that we were baited into this whole situation by Mr Perfect (or Perfectly Sadistic)... well that's just wrong.  I'm supposed to be repentent for this?

Now I must have this story wrong somewhere, because to my thinking, we should be shedding on the couch, stratching up god's furniture, and shitting in his shoes in retaliation for the way he treats us.

Hmmm....

Of course, if god did create this planet, considering how we're treating it, I guess we are shedding on the couch, scratching up his furniture and shitting in his shoes now aren't we?

the emperor's new clothes

"it's all an act you're playing, a role that you put on
a faded coat somebody handed down into your hands
everything you're saying, it's all been said anon
our dreams are only shoddy schemes nobody understands"
[Mike Wade, "Let It All Fall"]

Hush.  Sit down.  Stay calm for a minute.  I've got a secret I want to share with you.  It might seem a little frightening at first, so I want you to pretend it's just the two of us here.  No one will hear.  No one will know.  And I promise I won't tell anyone else afterward.  It's just the two of us: I, the writer, and you, the reader.  Be very quiet.  We don't want anyone to know, now do we?

But first make me one promise: that you won't stop reading.  Don't let anything I say frighten you away.  Once you start reading, don't stop until we're done.  It might be a little harsh at first, but grit your teeth and bear it.

Ready?

When I was in grade school, one of the classes ahead of me performed "The Emperor's New Clothes" for a stageplay one year.  If you're not familiar with the story, here's the reader's digest version as I remember it:  a tailor gives a tyrant king an imaginary set of robes, telling him something like how the truly amazing thing about them is that only the wise can see them.  The king walks around naked in his imaginary robes while he and all his loyal subjects pretend to see them.  It's a big joke and nobody wants to admit they don't get it.  It takes the village idiot or some such to bravely point out the fact that he's not actually wearing anything.

I found the performance a little boring, but hey, it was just grade school.  But I also thought the story a little too contrived.  I just didn't quite get it at the time.  I thought the characters were idiotic cowards.  How could nobody have the nerve to tell him he was naked?  He was bare-assed nekkid!  (Well, in the school play he had on undies, but you get the point.)  Geez.  Such cowardice.  Why so afraid of the truth?  Just tell him!

But I was young and naive then.  I didn't understand the world.  I still saw it with optimistic eyes, not yet jaded and frightened by the tragedies of life.  I was only beginning the descent we all face.  I'd only begun carefully constructing the little walls be all build to keep our feelings to ourselves and shut the world out.  The walls we build to conceal our "weakness".  And as we get older, we're taught a lot about how to feel, aren't we?  Boys seem to learn a few things about being "macho" for instance.  Crying is out.  Swearing is in.  A shot in the groin is allowed to hurt, but not so much that you'd cry, of course.  Telling a girl you love her is ok, but not out loud and over the phone.

In first year psychology at MUN, I learned about an interesting experiment.  They say that if you put 4 or 5 people in a circle and ask them to compare a few lengths of string, and if the first 3 people are people you've planted there who will all agree on the wrong answer, there is something like a 60% chance that the 4th person will trust them.  Either they'll believe them over their own eyes, or at least agree with them even in being wrong regardless of what they actually know is the truth.  Odds jump higher again for that 5th one after the 4th has agreed.  Takes a lot of will to go against the crowd, they say.  Power of peer pressure, they say.

Not being taught to defy and question the truth, I say.  What do you expect from people who are usually raised under indoctrinated religions and simultaneously piped through a melting-pot education system while trying to keep up with the latest fashions in their spare time?  We're sausages.  But that's an argument for another day.

The point is that I want to be that 4th person.  And I don't want to agree with the other three.  I want to be the courageous fourth, the minority fourth who speaks the truth, unafraid.  I want to be the village idiot who plainly tells the king he's naked.  And I want you to be that 4th too.  Because it's just so incredibly liberating.

Here is a truth that I see.  Here's that secret I wanted to share.  Your highness, there's something I have to tell you...

I am weak.

I am a pathetically weak emotional little wreck.

But I am not alone.

Because you are weak too.

You too are a pathetically weak emotional little wreck.

Every single fucking one of you.

Sit down, I ain't done.

I bet John Wayne sometimes sobbed himself to sleep at night, and if he didn't because he wouldn't let himself, then he's a bigger pussy than either of us.

But don't be afraid.  This is good news, not bad.  In fact, this is fantastic news.  It means we need each other.  And needing each other is not a sign of weakness.  That's the lie you've been led to believe.  That's the myth each of us continue to perpetrate.  Needing each other is actually a sign of strength.  It's what it is to be human.  Being human means needing to be loved.  It means needing to love others.  It means seeking approval.  It means having friends.  And it means missing those friends when they are gone, and crying sometimes when we are upset.  It means that when someone you love dies you go so far out of your fucking mind with grief that you consider ending your own life or having yourself committed to an asylum.  Or you get so numb you can't even think straight and feel like a zombie.  Or after weeks of thinking you are fine you surprise yourself one day when you break down suddenly into a quivering mass of tears and unintelligible syllables.

I was very depressed throughout most of my youth, to the point of having suicidal longings.  And I imagine that most of my siblings felt the same.  Each of us struggled to cope with the situation at home with my mother's MS.  And my mother struggled with it.  And my father struggled with it.  And we each had all the other stresses in our lives that one has too.  But we all put on our brave faces.  We all acted strong.  Never a moment's weakness.  Never show fear.

And most of the friends I was growing up with were going through all the usual teenage growing pains: dating, school, difficulty learning to cope with their parents and siblings, trying to make friends.  And most of them were actually going through a great deal of depression as well.  But we all acted strong.  Never a moment's weakness.  Never show fear.

And it was all such a big fat lie.

And maintaining that lie maintained that "status quo".  Because when you pretend you are all right, and you pretend you are strong, pride or shame keep you from seeking the help you need, from seeking the help we all need.  Ignoring problems doesn't make them go away.  You can avert your eyes, but it's still there.

I had one of my first drunken epiphanies when I was about 18 or 19.  There were 4 of us I think, all sitting in an upstairs bedroom at a friend's party.  I can only vaguely remember the experience now, being that it was about a decade ago and I was very drunk at the time.  But here's what happened.  Someone, one of us, I don't even remember who, suddenly broke and started talking about how they sometimes got so depressed they felt suicidal.  How they sometimes got so stressed they cried themselves to sleep at night.  How they felt like such a wimp because everyone around them was able to cope and they couldn't.  They were weak.  They were a coward.  And they had to hide this fact.  But once they'd opened this door of conversation, suddenly everyone came charging through.  Each person sat and spoke about the things that upset them.  About the times when they broke down, home alone, where no one would know.  About how they too, put on their brave face for the world, but inside was just a bundle of nerves.  And suddenly we all found a certain strength in that room, a solace in knowing we were not alone, and in that we were not "the weak one", but we were normal, or at least among friends who felt the same.  We felt the incredible liberty that comes from taking off the mask of bravery, and shedding the illusionary cloak of pride.

Then we sobered up.  We put our masks back on.  We put our cloaks back on.  And by the next day we pretended like it never had happened, and have seldom spoke of it since.

When my mother died, I lay awake staring at my ceiling many nights.  I just lay there, staring and thinking, for hours.  I would watch the sunlight slowly come into my room at dawn.  But my brain would not stop.  I could not stop the thinking.  The pain.  The confusion.  It just lingered there, right behind my eyes.  And some 30 feet away, in another room, my sister Nancy was doing the exact same thing.  We were carefully maintaining that same fascade of strength we'd displayed all our lives to this point.  And finally I broke, and at 3 am one night, I stepped close to the doorway of her room and whispered to her to see if she were awake.  She was, and she invited me in.  I sat on the foot of her bed and we talked for hours.  This became almost a regular routine for weeks afterwards.  Some nights I'd go to her.  Some nights she'd come to me.  But in those weeks we helped each other grieve our mother immensely, and at the same time we formed a bond between us that we'd never had before.  Suddenly we had our own little secret pact: that if either of us really felt we were at the end of our rope, we could turn to one another, because we knew we could count on the other to be there when we needed them.  And I wished I'd done it a decade earlier when I needed it then.

I find myself at the end of my rope often.  And when I do, I try to gather up my courage, shed that illusory cloak, and confide to a friend how I feel.  And a good friend gladly helps you bear that pain.  And they feel no burden doing so.  True friends don't want to only share in your happiness, they want to share in your sorrow too.  They want to share all of your life with you.

When I see people grieving I feel for them.  And when I see friends grieving I want to reach out and share their pain.

I hear them say "I feel so alone" and I think of that party when I finally found out I wasn't alone.

I hear them say "no one could understand" and I think of sitting on the end of my sister's bed and discarding 10 years of pretending we were fine when we weren't.

I hear them say "I feel like I'm so weak" and I think, "Compared to what?  The illusion of strength the rest of us put on?  Compared to the Emperor's loyal subjects who nod enthusiastically that his robes are just lovely?"

Because when at long last, sitting on the edge of a bed at 3 am, or looking glassy-eyed over your drink at a friend slurring their words next to you, whenever, and however, we finally find the courage to swallow our pride, and stand, unashamed, before the masses to say, "holy shit!  Look, I'm naked." we will find that the courageous amongst them do not point and laugh.  They do not mock.  They applaud us instead.  They shed their imaginary robes and say, "yeah... I'm naked too.  Let's be naked together."  And the cowards are the ones who insist no one is naked, not even you, and flee in panic.  That's fine.  You don't need them.

Each of us copes with our problems in our own ways.  And each of us has problems to cope with.  And none among us are truly "weak".  Because to characterize someone or something as "weak" means conversely that someone or something else must be characterized as "strong".  And I haven't found that "strong" person.

All I've ever found is a village full of loyal subjects who've all been to the same charlatan of a tailor.

water, fire, colours, and numbers

"The eye of a human being is a microscope,
which makes the world seem bigger than it really is."
[Kahlil Gibran, "A Handful of Sand on the Shore"]

I had a few pen pals in my late teens.  Having spent a couple of summers in Greenwood, NS as a Staff Cadet, a few of my students, girls with harmless crushes, wrote me after the summers were over.  I was 17 or 18.  They were mostly 13 or 14, but it was nice to be liked, even for the wrong reasons, so I wrote back.  I became a sort of "big brother" to a few of them.  Having been their instructor, they looked up to me as if I somehow had all the answers.  I received a letter one day from one of them, let us call her "Laura", when she was in a little distress.  Laura had come to realize that within her small community, among the few boys her age, she was not exactly considered "a 10".  Now Laura was, in fact, a very pretty young girl, and she was very mentally mature for her age, as well.  She was 14, but clearly had the brain of a 16 year old.  I couldn't help but think she must have had some other hardships at home as well.  When people mature more quickly, it is usually the result of a difficult life.  But while she was a very pretty, she was a little over the "fashionable" weight.  She was still a very attractive girl, but for teenage boys bombarded with images of models, and who somehow think they can and should have one...  well... boys will be boys.  I don't really blame her pathetic, pimply-faced little counterparts.  What did they know of the world?  So she'd come to think she was "a 6".  And she wasn't very happy about it.  Who could be?

At about the same time that I'd gotten this letter, I was having a bit of a dilemma in my life too.  The issue at hand for me was that one of our friends wasn't spending much time with the group anymore.  Didn't he still like us?

And then one night it came to me.  It started in dream, and I sorted it out the next day.  And so I wrote "Laura" back, and shared with her what I'm about to share with you.  I wish I still had the original letter I wrote, but it went out with the trash when I was kicking the shit out of the pack-rat demon a few years back.  What follows is a recreation of a part of that letter.  Obviously, it's been a little too long for me to remember the language I used at the time, and I could probably word it much better now, but I will try as best I can to recreate it the way I created it then.  In any case, the point remains the same.

"Water, Fire, Colors, and Numbers".

"What a quantitative world we live in!  We are surrounded constantly by numbers, and try always to use those numbers to measure everything.  Tests in school, job performance evaluations, 4 star hotels.  Everything is measured in numbers.  Quantity.  What ever happened to quality?  Why do we measure so few things in this way?  Because it takes a little longer to explain?  Why, I ask, do we rate each other numerically rather than more like a movie review, and without that star thing at the end?  I'd like to think of it a little different.

If love is like fire, time is like water.  And people are not numbers, but colors.

Picture a room full of candles and glasses.  You have a pitcher of water and a match.  Each person in your life is both a candle and a glass.  Now love is like fire.  You can light as many candles as you want.  You can use one candle to light the next.  And with each new candle you light, the flame you used to light it does not shrink.  And the more people you love, the brighter your life becomes.  But the water.  There's the trouble.  You must pour out your pitcher into these glasses.  You can fill a glass if you want, or put in just a few drops.  You can empty
your pitcher, or keep some for yourself.  But the water is definitely measurable.  If you've poured it all out and decide you want more in a particular glass, you'll have to take it from another.  You see, there are only some many hours in a day.  And we can only be in one place at a time.  No matter how many people I love, I only have so much time to share amongst them.

People rate each other with numbers as to how "good-looking" someone is.  And it is so wrong.  People are not numbers.  We're colors.  What is your favorite color?  Suppose you said "red".  I say "blue".  Which is better?  What's the best color?  There is no best color.  There are more popular colors.  I imagine if you did a survey of favorite colors, red and blue would come up way more often than black or purple.  But does that make red a better color than purple?  No.  They are both just colors.  Fact is, there are still people whose favorite color is purple.  Why shouldn't there be?  We need all these colors.  Life would simply be way too boring in black and white.  Now suppose it turns out I'm purple.  I simply need to find someone whose favorite color is purple.  Lots of people like purple.  I'm not better or worse than red or blue, just different.  I'm an important part of the wide spectrum that's available out there.  And if you were to do that survey of colors, you would find people saying purple, and orange, and green, and yellow, and black, and so on and so on.  And that's all dating has ever been.  Figuring out what color you are, and then finding someone of your favorite color, who has your color as their favorite color."

I have tried ever since that day, that should I ever describe someone's looks in a negative way, I do not do so as a sweeping generalization.  Rather than saying, "she's not attractive", I try to say, "I don't find her attractive."  The former implies that the lack of attraction between myself and her has only to do with her, and that therefore, no one would find her attractive.  The latter accepts the subjectivity, the "I".  The lack of attraction between myself and her has to do with us both.  "I don't find her attractive... but many other people probably do."  Basically, I try to remember that I'm not saying, "she's a 5", I'm saying "she's not MY favorite color, but she's someone else's."  I don't always succeed.  The vocabulary we use is powerfully conditioned into us by our surroundings.  But I try.  I wish everyone would try.

I've never considered myself a very attractive man.  But then, I've never considered myself ugly either.  I guess I've always thought I'm average,
or perhaps a little under.  But the fact is, I'm just... I don't know, indigo?  Perhaps not that many women would say "indigo", but certainly some do (several have, you might say), and indigo is a very interesting color.

I bumped into "Laura" a couple of years ago.  She's still nice.  She's still pretty.  She's still over the "fashionable" weight.  But right about now, I bet she's making some guy really happy.  Some guy whose favorite color isn't red or blue.  Good luck, "Laura".  Perhaps it was
you who taught me.