I like reading NYTimes’ Modern Love section. It is a “must do” for me every weekend. The most recent story is about a woman whose wanderlust in her 20′s and early 30′s led her around the world. This wanderlust came from her not wanting to commit to just one thing. As a writer, she created the illusion of having a life with endless choice. But at the age of 34, she “felt the first tickles of envy for friends who were rooted. They had a gravitational pull that she lacked, “drawing people to them, to their homes and dining room tables.” And so she chose New York, an American city where she had friends, found a job, and signed a lease. On a work assignment, she met a man who eerily reminded her of herself. “Love can be narcissistic in that we often fall for a person in whom we see ourselves.” Another way of putting it, we are attracted to people like us, stories with familiar twists and turns. The guy visits her in New York for five days. At the end of the trip, they both agreed “to find a way to make this work.” A year later, he moves to New York with a Peugeot bicycle and top-notch kitchen knives. At this point, the reader can guess how the story ends.
“When I realized he was going to ask me to marry him, I wondered again if some part of me would seize up, if I would fall back into my old patterns. But since my decision to move to New York, through the four years during which I bought an apartment, was promoted at work and settled into routines, I had slowly become ready. And with this man, I saw, I wouldn’t be tied down so much as tied together.
When he asked, the choice was easy.”
I like to make paper hearts.
This woman’s story made me cringe with fear because I can relate to some of it.
In July 2011, I traveled to South Africa to work for what I thought would be just six months. I’m home right now for a month before going back with an indeterminate timeline. I’m young, healthy, and not tied down. It is the perfect time to see the world, to know myself a little better.
I can’t have this type of life for a long time though. It is being home this month, with family and friends, that made me realize how much I also crave regularity and rhythm. I’m going to figure out what I want and not live by what I don’t want. I know I will most definitely want a dining room table one day, to be tied together. Of course, preparation will also be necessary for me. Being tied together is scary. As a friend said yesterday, “You’re marrying someone knowing that they don’t know everything about themselves, and you definitely don’t either. But you are committed to figure out how to learn about self and other together.”
And hopefully, the rest will just fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle. Yes, jigsaw puzzle. Because life never goes the way you plan or when you make hard rules. For example, I recently realized that I make rules and then change my mind because of different reasons, mostly because the situation changed and I got a little older and wiser. Why did I make rules in the first place? It should be just what feels right and what is rational. Ah and now I’m reminded of this music video where Jason Mraz lands in Hawaii, leaves his apartment keys behind and walks out with just a backpack. I like the image of sitting in a taxi or the back of a pickup truck, weaving the air with your hands, and enjoying the ride. The song is “I’m Yours.”
“…Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you’re free
Look into your heart and you’ll find love love love love
Listen to the music of the moment people dance and sing, we’re just one big family…
Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you’re free
Look into your heart and you’ll find that the sky is yours
so please don’t, please don’t, please don’t.
There’s no need to complicate
’cause our time is short. I’m yours…”
