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| Love? |
A lot of us had spilled much emotion
in the game of human connection, and we are no closer to understanding it. I
often feel as if I’m standing on one side of a wide chasm, shouting across and
wondering if the response I hear comes from my other half or if it is my own
voice echoing back to me.
It seems to me that on my side of the
great divide of human emotions and connection, the search for unity with
another soul is the fountain of much of the world’s unhappiness. We try to
eagerly extract meaning from every encounter with the opposite sex, the
gestures, the demeanour, the countenance and the all too subtle mannerisms (how
about the ‘forced’ accent). It is a trick both gender never tires of playing.
Furthermore, after each encounter, we grow less content with ourselves and even
the opposite sex, the after-thought of each encounter (or date if you please)
is the most damning; ‘oh I should have said this when she smiled...’, ‘I should
have held her hands a little while longer’, ‘I should have kissed her good
night’ etc.
I know I’m sounding like I’m above
matters of the heart, but stay with me a little while longer. I have seen
emotions corrode the people I respect, but in my candid moments I often wonder
if love (for lack of a better word) is a game that virtually everyone fails to
understand, there are no rules, no books, and no clues to guide us through
every emotional adventure.
You can read or watch “Think like a
Man” all you want but you’ll still get stuck. Why? Because in the game of
love/emotions, as with life, there are no predefined rules, each lady is
different as is each man. What works for me, might not work for you, as we are
most likely not dating the same lady neither do we share the same character or
physical trait. The 90 day rule, the cookie in the jar, the mama’s boy, the
player, the non-committal, the happier divorced guy, and all that crap is
bullshit. There are over 6 billion people in the world, and I am no population
expert but how can you justify grouping them all into 6-8 different categories?
Whatever happens to the drug dealers, the real hip-hop heads, the rock star,
the unambitious young man etc?
I was at the bus park at Iwo Road in
Ibadan, sitting in a bus bound for Lagos in the first week of September and
this guy came to my window trying to get me to buy some books. So I decided to
have a look at what he’s got (some autobiographies maybe), but I found, “Think
like a Man”, “The art of seduction”, “Rules of life” (Really? Life in a
comfortable America or Europe, or life in a remote village of Africa where
people are ravaged with diseases and poverty? Please, don’t tell me about life
if you’ve not been down here), “How to seduce any girl”, “How to make the girl
of your dreams fall in love with you” etc. I burst into laughter and waved the
poor guy away.
I often wonder why people (or anybody)
can believe that following a set of rules by some “expert” on love and human
emotions will improve your chances of getting ANY lady. The author is most
probably a single or divorced man of a different geographical location to
yourself, his opinion or supposed expert findings is probably based on his own
life experiences and/or through a survey in the city of New York or London, why
would those same rules apply to you living in Lagos?
The human mind (which happens to be
the seat of our emotion) is a very complicated and sensitive part of the human
anatomy. My belief is that meeting people or falling in love is all about
chances, mood, and usually an unexplainable chemistry that even the best
scientists in the world cannot explain. Yes you can make an impression on
someone by refining your finest qualities, but those qualities will only
attract someone who cherishes them.
After all, if we or the “experts” have
the purity of all our convictions, we would not regret so many of the things
we’ve done, nor would we persist against so many of our better instincts after
every encounter or date with the opposite sex.
I have a friend who when we were in
school, was so into this pretty babe in Accounting, he had met her at a
departmental dinner night and they hit it off as friends, but as hard as my
friend tried to get into the babe, the babe just won’t bulge, days turn to
weeks but the situation remains, then after another futile evening of trying,
he came back to the hostel and asked me, ‘is there anything that I should do,
that I’m not doing?’. My reply to him that night was that, “you don’t need to
necessarily do something for her to give in to your advances; you don’t have to
try so hard”. He eased off, and gradually he got over the babe, you see it was
not meant to be (and for the records, this my guys is a romantic, I believe he
still is).
Everyone finds the dating game a
challenge, one that in spite of all the shits that has gone down continues to
stimulate, and so the efforts & encounters continues. I don’t deny that
some of us have a way with ladies, it cannot be explained, it just happens,
even then we still get bounced back every now and then. If it’s not happening
for you, it could mean that you’ve not met that person that will appreciate the
qualities inherent in you or that you have failed to refine those qualities. So
I leave you to ponder, have you simply failed to find the answers to the
questions that preoccupy you, or can they not be answered at all?
There are no relationship experts,
there are no rules, just go with the flow, you’ll make mistakes, we all do, but
those mistakes will make you a better person.
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