Plastic Hearts.

A little late to be thinking about V-day, but cupid can be a little cruel and shoot arrows in the wrong direction at the worst of times. I believe that in the 21st century, money does buy love. Yeah, yeah, I know it's that feeling, that tingly, oogly, lovey dovey feeling. Sure... please come back to me after the honeymoon stage of the romance and tell me you have that same feeling. Maybe, I am just ranting about this 'lovey dovey' feeling, because I envy the people who have it, for a lifetime. But, my point still is, there is a monetary standard to love now that makes it seem so fake and so unreal.
Well, let's check out the folks that claim unconditional love is possible (leave aside god's love for the sake of simplicity). The absurd phrases that start with 'no matter what' and end with '...I still love you'. Gawk! Are we obsessed with losing the love or just the connection we had for a very long time? Or is it just that we want to be saintly and forgiving and morally 'in the right'. I suppose, anyone can find that kind of love. But, it could be confused with admiration for persons with truly wretched minds. (I am thinking of all those people who join cults and praise its leader in admiration --- that truly is unconditional love) And, then again, how much more wretched do we have to be aside from simply having a mind!
So, now I wonder, are we caught up in a world of loving pretenders or pretending to love? I feel a little like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City saying that, but I suppose she would ponder over something like this - had she been a real person. We all have checklists: not the brunettes, not the isolated maniacs, the rock star, the Irish man, the duplicate of Jessica Alba, and so on. Are we checklist-ing ourselves into a lifetime of disappointment and indirectly setting up standards that we know we can't possible sustain in reality?
I suppose we could argue that dreaming is always healthy, but does that justify waiting for the person with the perfect score on the checklist and wasting time, money and emotions on the ones that don't? One of two ways again: yes and no. The ones that argue yes, have had no pleasure of having experimented with a ton or few people and grown to know that the checklist is superficial or needs alteration. The ones that argue no, have been either crazed out or don't believe in waiting for their perfect mate.
Whichever category you fall under, it seems clear that neither really satisfies the inner urge to know somebody so well that you can be ANYTHING to them. No relationship definition necessary. No control, just a simple letting go. Of course, this relationship is impossible unless one is crazy. I digress. What it also doesn't satisfy is one of the points on the checklist: will he/she make me happy in the future by societal standards? Buying a house, a car, furniture, a steady job... and we are back to the checklists again. No love in sight. Just checklists  and whether or not they sustain that 'lovey dovey' feeling long enough so that there is no question of separation. Let's face it: love is not just a feeling, unless you were suspended in time and space and let yourself simply live in the X moment when you felt Y with particular person Z. The practicalities to it are endless and ones that we have never been told at childhood.
I'd suggest an end to the publication of the princess stories for children and the superhero comics for boys, but it would be a shame to not let the children reading them be a little brainwashed by the unreality and then come to terms with it later.

That's all for now.
XOX