Red Room Where the Writers Are

Settling can be a dangerous thing.  Being comfortable can be soul-threateningly. And ego can get in the way of it all.

An old friend of mine related a story to me today.  She had been dating a guy for a few years while attending law school.  Recently, she broke up with him and moved home.  She told me that she knew she was going to be okay but that she felt bad for him.  When I inquired as to why she said that she knew she would have no trouble eventually finding someone good enough to love but that it killed her that he probably wouldn’t.

Often times we find ourselves faced with these decisions, whether or not we should hurt someone we love at the cost of our own happiness.  It is so easy to settle, so easy to become complacently comfortable and forget the passion and ambition and fire that led us to one another from the start. Is it crueler to stay with someone for their sake or to, using the political parlance of our times, cut and run?

We are all so certain in our relationships, even when we are confused as hell.  How many times do you see a couple and think that you could not imagine a more mismatched pair and yet they are together and you are alone?  It is impossible to see what someone else’s heart does and so we are forced to reserve judgment even in the face of genuine concern.  We have all been there and let our hearts and genitals guide us over the protestations of our feeble minds.

Eventually, it becomes enough.  If the person you sleep next to every night is not as appealing in the light of day then at some point, everyone will say “Enough.” It is the journey to “Enough” that fascinates me, as I approach my late twenties both single and cynical.  The fact that I have never had a successful relationship troubles me until I remember that the most anyone can have is one.  Every passionate affair, every pledge of undying love, it is all forsaken in the name of self and the pursuit of that perfect ideal.  It all becomes “Enough.”

When I think of my friend, I think of a world-beater, a woman for whom nothing is too large an obstacle to be overcome.  So when I listen to her tell her story and see it can be directly applied to my own life as well, I remember that love is truly a universal event.  We are all shaped by it, we are all emboldened and made ecstatic by it and we are all devastated by its heavy hand.  Love is truly the great equalizer for all people.  And whether we are in its embrace or under its boot, we can take solace that we are feeling a universal emotion.  We can remember that we are all human.