Sometimes in searching for a mate it’s easy to find yourself out of control.
It’s all a crap shoot or a series of accidental encounters or a little of both elements. If I get on the Yellow line of the Metro who will I meet? If I leave five minutes earlier and then bus it, will my adventure be that much more fruitful?
We wonder, we plan, but what do we know really?
Seeking out another person who speeds up the heartbeat or quickens the pulse isn’t something you can practice and then improve at like you can with karate or hip hop dancing. Luck’s got to be in the mix.
At least this is how I feel from time to time.
How another person reacts to me, whether he notices me—or shows what a blasted fool he is if he overlooks my fabulousness—isn’t something I can easily control. Believe me, I’ve tried.
A stare-down does not equate to mind control, I’ve learned. This supremely bites.
So here’s what I’m trying: Focusing on what I can control. That, and only that.
This weekend during a rerun of “The Millionaire Matchmaker” that I came across during a fit of rapid-fire channel-changing, I heard a sentence that reinforced the sentiment:
Love can only live in a loving place.
Usually Patti Stanger’s words to clients are curt, gruff, not particularly wise or unusual. But this idea, which she conveyed to a particularly unloveable nightlife promoter, struck me as more novel somehow, something I could use. Either that or I was relieved that she took a break from talking about “the penis doing the picking” or some men’s preferences for spinners over skiksas.
The client reaping the advice wasn’t pleased with the suggestion. He just wanted a hot chick and an absence of back talk from his matchmaker. If so, this was not the show on which he should have agreed to appear.
Her point, regardless, was to focus inward. Even meeting the greatest woman in the history of women—a female that could made Heidi Klum look like a dog and Amy Poehler a boring, talentless hack—was pointless if the guy wasn’t right.
As I go forward, though, it’s something I’m going to try. Maybe if I suppress negative thoughts, feelings of frustration and annoyance about those things people can do, I can channel love. If I channel love inside me, the theory goes, it’ll radiate outward and attract great things in a magnetic force field of positivity.
If nothing else, it’s something to master and try to control as I react to the rest of the randomness.
–Dena