So Observent

There are times, while sitting observantly in a corner of a crowded place, that I find the world just so weird.  I find that I can’t understand this social engagement model we have set up - we expunge so much effort yearning to find “the one” to spend our time with, yet likewise it seems as if we rarely feel as if we have finally arrived where (or with who?) we are supposed to be.

Is it simply human nature in the modern age?  Do we have the animal urge to procreate and nest all while travel blogs, fortune 500 news feeds, and mommy mags selling us £1,000 prams have given us an impossible image of perfection to achieve?  Do those native instincts - that partners provide a higher probability of survival and love helps heal some of life’s cruel realities - collide with the relentless options of capitalism and the pressure of keeping our social-media-selves competing with the Jones’?

For example, that couple over there … fit and hipster, a respectable number of tattoos, rail thin, reasonably attractive together … yet I am positively certain he is pissed off with that damn French bulldog she must constantly have on her lap, snorting in his face right now.  He is cursing the day he laid her down.  Silent, scanning the room, I am sure he has already starting planning his exit strategy.

Or how about them over there … they seem comfortably in domestic bliss (based on their slightly bulging waistlines and pasty skin), yet I see his baby blue eyes have been staring off up into the sky as if he is dreaming he is a big airline pilot soaring across the vast Pacific (“how did I get here?”).  Yet, he will stay for her, because that is what life is about - loyalty, sacrifice, compromise, mediocracy.

And that couple … nearly robotic in their obviously repetitive execution of the nightly meal.   Fork, mouth, smile lovingly, fork, mouth, fork, mouth, phone check, fork mouth, communicating “shall we go to bed?” without words (actually I mean can I just go home and look at my Facebook?). “#Loveyou.”

Even the two handsome gay boys look quite uncomfortable in the domestic sanctuary of the pub, poking intently at their smartphones, as if they are praying no one they know (and super hot) sees them there wearing their corporate blue work shirts.   

And in between these thoughts I of course think of myself … what is wroooong with me?  Am I so afraid of relationship failure that I can’t see how truly perfect it is to have someone to spend every minute with?  That I manifest these fantasies about how each of them truly wishes they were somewhere else?  That I fear the monotony of every day, nothing new to talk about?  Or that I have yet to have very many examples in my life of couples who truly have made this work?  How about the utter humiliation that failure would cast upon me?  Have I been brainwashed by love stories and song lyrics and foreign accents and pectorals and Conde Nast myself??

Enough.  As I pack up my laptop to go home, forget this nonsense, focus on the positive, convince myself I am fine, I catch a glimpse of those around me.  “Poor girl.”  “She looks so lonely.”  “ I can’t believe she comes out to eat alone.”  “Seems like a workaholic.”  “She’s probably psycho.”  “Aw, I hope she finds someone.”