Harder than it seems...

Found this online. Do visit Isa Garcia's blog! She's quite insightful without being stuffy and preachy. I like her.

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You Should Date…

Posted on June 6, 2011 by everydayisa

My good friend, Den, suggested that I blog and write down all the reasons why I think guys should date me. It’s a promising topic (because I really believe that I’m date-able!) but right now, something that I think bears more weight is: The Kind of Person I Want YOU to Date.

I don’t know who you are but I want great things for you. I want you to have romance and committed love and something real. Something that lasts. That’s really hard to come by these days but I want that for you and I want that for me, too. Here are some of the things I wish I could tell my future children about love. To be honest, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get married and have kids but that’s okay. I’ll pass these things on to you instead. You, my friend, are worthy of great, authentic love.

Please never settle.

Love,

Isa

***

The person I want you to date exists and I want you to wait it out until you meet them. Because, in case you haven’t yet, you will. Waiting is for the brave – it means watching years pass, noticing yourself growing older and sitting through wedding after wedding after wedding. It means bottling that slow-rising fear. It means questioning your standards and running the risk of settling.

I wish someone had told me that the person I was meant to be with was a real actual living person, breathing in some part of the world and waiting, too. I did not believe in romantic destiny so I projected all my hopes into the wrong people and tried desperately to make these wrong people right. In the end, no one won and the aftermath was a combination of devastating grief, self-loathing and crippling regret. I do not want that for you.

Wait.

The person I want you to date might be making morning coffee right now or sleeping through a thunderstorm or getting a degree in Physics. Wait. I mean it. Every other person will be a cheap imitation of the real thing.

The person I want you to date believes in big things. This person has a passion and pursues it with a hunger that could set the world on fire. This person believes in setting goals and making them happen. Trust me: you will never regret being with someone who is madly in love with their purpose in life. When you meet this person — this unstoppable ball of good fury — I want you to have a vision of your own. A goal you can shape your life around. I want you to have a desire to change the world, whatever pocket of it you belong to. You can’t be stagnant when the person you’re with is active and dynamic. Life is a grand celebration of doing great things that matter and you (yes, you) play a huge part in all of it.

The person I want you to date has character. When you’re young, all you’re looking for is personality. Charm. Compatibility in music and book taste and food preferences. I think these are all well and good but character is what sustains a relationship when all of these things change. Personality is ever-evolving, character grows and amplifies in time. Character is when a person does beautiful things without seeking credit. It’s when someone doesn’t quit — even if every fiber of their being begs them to. It’s the ability of someone to graciously expend back-breaking heart-wrenching love to someone who has disappointed and failed them. Character is that beautiful thing that gets molded over time and experience. Be someone with character and never settle for someone without it.

The person I want you to date will be into you. Really, really into you. There will be no need for pointless mind games, no room for even the slightest bit of emotional confusion. The person I want you to date will be crystal clear about their intentions towards you. They will not win you over with sweet nothings or romantic gestures. Their love will be bigger than the superficial trappings of courtship. The person I want you to date will take the time to get to know you. They will see everything there is to love about you and they will look at the core of all the bad stuff and not balk. They will not run at the first sign of ugliness. Instead, they will love you through it.

I want you to know that the person I want you to date will fail you. Give them the grace to be human. (You are one, too.) Don’t listen to those stupid quotes that tell you that the person who loves you will never make you cry. I want you to realistically approach this thing we call human relationships. Hurting one another is part of the messy dynamics of getting close to someone. But the person I want you to date is a person who knows how to resolve conflict especially when it blows up in both your faces. Their ego will never be too big to own up to their mistakes.

And when it comes to their love for you, YOU WILL KNOW. Their love will be the most painfully obvious thing in the world that though you will come to question many, many things in life, you will never — not even once — question them.

And you know what? They will believe in you so much that you will never feel compelled to question yourself. You will put all your insecurities to rest because the person I want you to date will, more than anything, make you feel that you matter. Always. And you know why? Because you do.

I’m sure it sounds like a long shot but what if you dared to believe that the person I want you to date is real? Love is greater than cynicism and this is what I believe — yes, me, the last single girl in the world: While some people think this all sounds too good to be true, there is a God who is out to give us things that are much too good to be false.

Believe. Don’t settle. And in the meantime: become the person that the person you’re looking for is looking for.

...

I really didn't know what I was getting into after all.

Out there...

it's raining.

Missed Call

Question, how do you save the numbers of people you meet online? I mean, what name do you save in your phonebooks? Do you type in their online pseudonyms with a tag "Blogger" before them? Or perhaps you use their real names?

I guess it's because I'm a little OC that I prefer having people's full names in my phonebook. Plus it's a personal preference that I be called my own name. If truth be told, I kinda cringe when people call me Darc even after we've personally met. I cringe big time! Lol

And I recall an online/offline friend who told me before that I've "levelled up" since he already saved my number under my real name in his phonebook. And that made me think, is the way we save people's numbers reflective of the level of closeness or intimacy we have with that person? Seems to me there is a real online/offline divide that needs to be transcended and that requires a substantial degree of trust and shared offline experience.

What do you think? More importantly, how is my number saved in your phonebooks? Lol

The Coward Stamp

I received a link in one of my Facebook groups that pointed to an article by Jonathan Franzen published as an op-ed in the New York Times. Its title was "Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts." I have yet to fully bite the article and grasp the many things it pointed out but let me share with you some parts that struck me most.

1. That being liked is often an obstacle to being loved.

"The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life."

2. That trying to please everyone and keeping the peace may in fact be a reflection of a deep-seated self-centeredness, narcissism even.

"This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self."

3. That pain is an integral part of human existence (suddenly, the Goo Goo Dolls sing in my head, "Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive.").

"And yet pain hurts but it doesn’t kill. When you consider the alternative — an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived. Even just to say to yourself, 'Oh, I’ll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s' is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources. Of being (and I mean this in the most damning sense of the word) a consumer."

4. And that loving in spite of the hurt, celebrates what is in fact our borrowed time on earth.

"Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it."

So from now on, I guess the only resolution is to just keep on loving and living, to take chances and risks and allow ourselves to be vulnerable for it is in exposing the entirety of ourselves - faults, disagreeable tendencies and all - that we allow other people to love us in the truest sense of the word. Something that goes beyond liking and merely existing.

PS: The article escapes me but I've also read somewhere that an indicator of a troubled relationship is when you keep things and issues to yourself because you fear that it will cause argument between you and your partner. I guess honesty and acceptance do take precedence over keeping an erstwhile "imagined" sense of peace.

APE

1. Chest x-ray

2. Blood pressure

3. Pulse rate

4. Routine lab tests

5. Dental check-up

6. Visual acuity

And then came the weigh in...

"Sir, ang-gaang niyo," the nurse quipped after adjusting the scale a couple of times to a lower bar.

And then the physical check-up...

"You're generally ok although I'd recommend that you see an ophthalmologist for your eyes. It's great that you don't smoke and occasional drinking is actually good for your health. Your heartbeat's ok too; it's slow much like that of an athlete's (Darc blushes) and should you wish to add on weight, your max would probably be around 130 lbs. You're trying to lean up right?"

I replied with a half-hearted, "Ok."

What can I do, I have weight issues. Hehe

Second Best

I was surfing Youtube, hopping from one video to another when I finally landed on John Legend's Vevo page and clicked on "Everybody Knows." I like this song, that's a given. But what caught my attention was the highest rated comment found just below the video. It says:

I remember dancing this song with my girlfriend at her graduation 2 years ago....... We are now seperated...The thing is.....I still love her with all my heart....even more than my current gf.... Take my advice and enjoy your time with your special someone because nobody really knows.... :(

triniterror21 1 month ago 54

Major major sigh. The guy loves his ex with all his heart, even more than his current girlfriend. If truth be told, that's my biggest fear relationship-wise. I'd rather be single, unattached and free to live my life than have someone who sort of thinks of me as a mean-time boy. I want to be with someone who sees me as his one great love and not as someone he just settles for. It's difficult to be with someone who hugs you and kisses you yet thinks of "the one that got away."

Suddenly, I'm reminded of Katy Perry's "Thinking of You."

I don't want to be in that situation... again.

Comparisons are easily done

Once you've had a taste of perfection

Like an apple hanging from a tree

I picked the ripest one

I still got the seed

You said move on

Where do I go?

I guess second best

Is all I will know

'Cause when I'm with him

I am thinking of you

Thinking of you

What you would do

If you were the one

Who was spending the night

Oh I wish that I

Was looking into your eyes

You're like an Indian summer

In the middle of winter

Like a hard candy

With a surprise center

How do I get better

Once I've had the best

You said there's

Tons of fish in the water

So the waters I will test

He kissed my lips

I taste your mouth

He pulled me in

I was disgusted with myself

'Cause when I'm with him

I am thinking of you

Thinking of you

What you would do

If you were the one

Who was spending the night

Oh I wish that I

Was looking into

You're the best

And yes I do regret

How could I let myself

Let you go

Now the lesson's learned

I touched it, I was burned

'Cause when I'm with him

I am thinking of you

Thinking of you

What you would do

If you were the one

Who was spending the night

Oh I wish that I

Was looking into your eyes

Looking into your eyes

Looking into your eyes

Oh won't you walk through

And bust in the door

And take me away

Oh no more mistakes

'Cause in your eyes, I'd like to stay.

- Thinking of You, Katy Perry