The preposterousness of choices
To put it mildly, the idea of love is a mockery of your sanity in epic proportions. Do we really know who we want and why we want them? And if there is one thing which is true in this digital age, it is the fact that everywhere you go, people always seem to know. They know what they want to eat, watch, fuck, or read. They know they like beaches over the mountains and coffee over tea. (Let's not forget the hipsters and their kombuchas.) They know the sacrilege it is to top your pizza with pineapples and to grimace(and move on) when they find an insensitive comment on race. Opinions and perspectives, Absolutes and ideas; all colliding into a dictum of that one choice, standing sure and straight.
And so you choose in love too. It starts out as a complex, almost an alchemical recipe of eclectic ingredients. You bond over Pad Thai and laugh over an inside joke from a movie you watched on your first date. You think you like his wit and he thinks he adores your sarcasm. Date nights and crazy travel stories. Dylan and the Yellow Submarine. Potted plants and board games. Your friends adore him, his dog loves you. Life is glorious suddenly, the nights never end and before you know, you think you have found your soulmate, custom-made for you, in this whole wide world. You have made your choice. (Have you?)
Because when you really think of it, most of your choices are defined by who you are at only that singular moment of time, that differential reality you create anew every day. You will happily drink your black coffee every single day watching reruns of Stranger Things until the day you discover Matcha. You might eventually accept that the foliage up the mountains is as soothing as the crashing waves by your secret beach. But it is an easy decision, all you have to do is to have an unrelenting friend (and a mosquito repellant) to go on that first hiking trip.
But love is a casuistry. After all, how do you choose/unchoose a human being as easily as cream on your coffee? The primordial soup of qualities which had you select your human, eons ago doesn't seem to change much, but it does smell and taste differently. Hell, it even bubbles differently. And when you warily try to grab a cup of it and add some croutons, you realize the Friday night Pad Thai has become mundane and his dog is annoying. Your sarcasm is what makes him snap and his date night ideas of Netflix and custard are a bore. The relationship microcosm branches away from the macrocosms of your new realities, fragmented, and unreal. “Who are we” doesn't have any answers left; you have exhausted those possibilities in arguments on grills, in couples counseling and introspections. It is not you, it is him. It’s not him, it’s his ex — The variations are endless and the result is still the same. 3 AM sleepless nights become the new normal while you still laugh and smile around people(Be the face the world needs and such) The rhythmic sloshing of emotional waves lull you from pain as you wade deeper and deeper. Down you go. The questions pile up too; where did you go wrong with your choice? You thought you knew your mind and his heart. (or did you?)
Another day, another face, another you and the grind continues — one recipe after another, tweak the ingredients as you may, you never seem to escape the time loop; the causality becomes inevitable and The Matrix makes sense.
Be gentle on yourself though because one day with one of your humans, you will realize that the glitch is real. You begin to see the truth, behind the veil. It will make you mellow and accept that you don’t, maybe, just maybe, know everything. (might even go try that pineapple pizza, why did you hate it in the first place?). You see all the multiple realities and realize that together you aren’t different facets of the same diamond; hard and unrelenting but he is the evanescent yellow to your sea of blue. you morph and distort as you grow but who would want a swirl of green in life?
Eventually, truth is quiet, as it silently walks you through the veil; this intricate tapestry of love, life, and relationships. It smiles kindly at your heartaches and shows you how your choices are less of a crossroads for you take sharp turns at and more of those delightfully irrelevant signboards as you drive through endless strawberry fields. Sure they are informative, but you do not buy everything they advertise, do you? Let go of the absolutes you wanted to branch out into and the perspectives you grew up with. Pause those opinions (remember you like the pineapple toppings now) and know the person. You are both here to enjoy the ride, aren’t you? Isn’t that the only choice that matters? (It is preposterous to think otherwise, you know.)
