Love. I can't think of a word with a more slippery definition (except "tax break", but that's a phrase). It means widely differnet things to different people, and although it usually ends up with us getting screwed, we all want it.
So what is love exactly? From a clinical point of view, it all goes down to ensuring our survival as a species. Love holds us together through thick and thin. It keeps mothers from strangling their screaming babies. It exhorts us males to go out a risk our lives to defend our families. Yep, it's almost as much a unifying factor as hate and fear, but I'll save that for a later date.
Then there's how the different sexes view love in the non-platonic, non-familial sense. Women typically want one guy and put a lot more emotional importance to sex. Why? 'Cause back in the old days, a pregnant woman or one with a newborn needed a guy to bring home the bacon or mammoth or whatever. Have you ever seen a woman who was eight months pregnant take down a water buffalo? Didn't think so.
Then there are men. We want love, I suppose, but we don't attach that much importance to sex. I think that we seem to attach more to groups, since in a primitive tribal society, we really wouldn't have known which offspring were ours or which women were pregnant with our kids, so we would have had to provide for them all. Our job is just to spread our genes among as many women as we can, since we never know when we're sabre-tooth tiger food. After all, biologically speaking, men are pretty much expendable. Women are the bottleneck in baby production, and needed to be protected. If you live in a society that has lost 90% of its men, you'll probably be OK. You lose 90% of your women, you're dead. Of course, with modern population rates and reductions in infant mortality, women are much less vital than they used to be. SO, if women want to go to war and halve my chances of being drafted, that's O-the-hell-K with me.
Let's get back to me here. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I have too many conflicting ideals, and love is certainly one of those areas where I'm screwed. Sure, I WANT the classic, poetic version of idealistic, perfect love, but I KNOW that it's bullshit, that it doesn't exist. Sure, I WANT to believe that there's someone special out there just for me, but that's even worse-smelling bullshit. All I have to do is look around and see how bad an average relationship can be. Just by scrutinizing the relationships of my friends, seeing how many times they fall in "love," praising the qualities of virtues of their S.O. only to have the whole thing fall apart and then claim that they were never in love is proof enough for me that the poets are full of it. As my then-girlfriend-turned-evil-back-stabbing-'ho taught me, I'm not immune to that kind of thing (but at least I still admit that I really DID love her). I also realized that sure, I got screwed pretty hard, but it could have been much, much worse. All I have to do is look at other people's crappy relationships to see that.
So where does that leave me? Part of me wants to go get a chick, bang her until her ears bleed, and forget about her. The problem with that is, I probably won't be able to forget about her, and I'd be taking a lot of unnecessary risks. Another part of me wants to go get a chick, fall in love, get married, have kids, and live happliy ever after. The problem with THAT is that it could end up getting screwed even worse and it will take a long time to pull together. And then ANOTHER part of me just wants to dress up in a clown suit, get a high-power rifle, climb to the top of a tower, and KILL EVERYBODY! KILL! KILL! KILL!! Whoa, where did THAT come from?
In light of the fact that I have no idea what I want, I have resolutely decided to mind my own business and avoid any entanglements. After all, I'm done with my MBA in May, so what's the friggin' point?
Of course, with a well-turned piece of tail and a wink, my resolution will stand as much chance as a sandcastle against a steamroller.
Tune in next time for more earth-shaking revelations.