What is love [baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more]? But really, in this day and age, what really is love? Between the time you meet someone and when you actually go out with them, you have probably already fed your mind with so many presumptions thanks to social media. Does social media in fact ruin relationships, before they even begin?
Don’t get me wrong, advances in technology make it easier for us to know each other through communicating (asking the right questions, learning, putting our thoughts and feelings to words), but simply using it to dig up information sets us up for failure. We fool ourselves into thinking we know someone through our “research,” instead of learning about each other through conversing. Then, we are quick to jump into being intimate, and while the physical chemistry may be there, that can soon wear-off once we realize we really don’t know that person, or that we aren’t emotionally or mentally compatible because we never truly got to know each other in the first place.
Imagine this…you meet someone, and let’s say you two are shy and don’t exchange numbers…you quietly part ways, and go home, immediately checking out their profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, what-have-you. You’ll see a few pictures of them looking their best (and possibly worst), their favorite movie, what they had for dinner last Wednesday, and anxiously await and see if they too are doing the exact same thing as you, and gather the courage to shoot you a message (let’s be clear, no one “pokes” anymore). Almost everything is Google-able, so our conversations have lost quality. Why would we ask about their work if we know everything from their LinkedIn profile? I suppose with the way technology is growing, these things are inevitable, but, they’ve actually caused a more serious problem than we may think.
I think this is the essence of what’s wrong with relationships and dating these days. Everything is given to us at our fingertips. We’ve developed an addiction to instant and temporary gratifications. We’ve forgotten that it takes effort and work to make a relationship grow and survive. Some we don’t even “know what we want” anymore, because we are so blinded by these distractions and petty routines. We’ve forgotten the things that are truly important. It’s not hard to understand why. It’s much easier to fill our daily lives with these instant and temporary gratifications, than to work towards something that could end up being painful and heartbreaking in the end. And because everything is at our fingertips, we have trained our minds to “care” about the most trivial things, like someone’s politics, race, religion, socioeconomic status, et cetera.
We are so busy filling blanks and searching, that we have become disgustingly formulaic and picky. We are not machines, we are humans. The person sitting across from isn’t going to perfectly fit your ideal match checklist, and can probably point out as many shortcomings in your social media profile as you can in theirs. If we looked at these “flaws” as mere “differences” to be explored, we could begin to find beauty in them, making us more compatible with more people. We could be intrigued by our differences, and allow that to add adventure in our lives, while making our values stronger and synchronized.
These days, the minute something gets hard, our instinct is to run away and quickly find something temporary to replace the slightest discomfort life may throw at us. I ask, how realistic is this? We are training ourselves to be weak, lack perseverance, and not go after what’s truly important in life: the matters of the heart. What happened to the days of being TOO LEGIT TO QUIT? It’s this temporary satisfaction we should be running away from, not the difficulties that come with a rewarding and fruitful life. If you ask me, I rather be heartbroken a million times, then drown myself in a routine of unfulfilling, time-passing, nonsense. I would rather feel every emotion my soul is capable of, then coast through life with the same people, places, and things.
After all, life isn’t easy, and relationships are right up there. Falling in love is an amazing feeling, but keeping that love alive, actively, is hard work, as it should be. There is nothing more rewarding than finding your match, and potentially making a family with that person – that is what we have been put on this earth to do. I don’t know how people do it, just live, work, eat, drink, sleep, and don’t share a minute of it with someone who warms up their heart. I’ll leave you with this thought – nothing worth having comes easy. We’re so consumed in adding filters to photos, but you can’t add a filter to real life. Let’s live life with #nodrama, #nofear, and #nofilter. You can choose to be fulfilled by the ordinary, or live for something greater.
Image by: Fey Illyas
By: Paris Rouzati (Editor-in-Chief)
