Random "a-ha!" moment

Do you ever feel that something happened because you needed it to? Someone came into you life at a particular time or you gained a piece of information at just the right moment? I've felt this and believe that some things are just meant to happen. The things that help us to remain headed in the direction we are supposed to go. I don't think everything's set in stone prior to things happening but I do think there are certain things we are meant to do and experience.

Last week was a rough week for me emotionally. I was a little all over the place and to some degree or other questioning a lot of things in my life. Sunday morning when I came home from work I picked up Chuck Klosterman's book - SEX, DRUGS, AND COCOA PUFFS (A LOW CULTURE MANIFESTO) - and read the following:

"No woman will ever satisfy me. I know that now, and I would never try to deny it. But this is actually okay, because I will never satisfy a woman, either."

My first thought reading this was "what?" but as I continued to read it made perfect sense. In the first chapter/essay of the book he talks about what movies and general culture has done to our expectations of what love and relationships should be. He uses When Harry met Sally as an example and discusses the fact that this is rarely how it goes in life. He states that more often the scenerio is that one person falls for their friend and the friend has no idea and in most cases does not return the feelings, thus leaving the person likely shit out of luck. Klosterman generally points out the fact that hollywood and our culture more generally has created these unrealistic expectations that we all measure our relationships against one way or another to be left unsatisfied because they don't match up. In reading this I came to realize that I need to stop wondering about what might be, might have been, etc. as realistically it's never going to be. Reality is never going to match the "hollywood ideal" or for that matter, my own mind's creation. It just doesn't work that way. I've established that I need to appreciate what I have and stop worrying about what I don't have. Focus on what's right in front of me and making it the best it can be. Accept my life for what it is and the fantasies for what they are and the fact that they will never be one and the same unless I base my fantasies on reality instead of trying to do it the other way around.

Thanks Klosterman, I needed that.

Life is what it is. Take it for that and nothing more.