Love and loss

Is it really better to have loved and lost or is ingorance truly bliss...

Just what about ripping your heart out and stomping on it in the middle of a mosh pit is beneficial?

Oh!  What lessons we've learned!  What wisdom we can partake!

Bull...

I vote ignorance...

Here's why.  If you're ignorant you don't know any better and you go on blissfully unaware of the horrors of the world around you.  Your safe, little insular life prevents you from considering anything that could challenge those rose colored glasses.

All is grand.

There's something to be said for wisdom but to get it takes courage and a willingness to discover a world far scarier than our warm little cocoon could process.

You're happier if you're a coward in this instance.

Here's the difference between love lost and ignorance of it.

When love is lost what you're really losing is hope.  Along with it goes faith, civility and all those other niceties that come from living in modern society.

You mourn what could have been.  What dreams may have been realized with that special someone.

When love is never known all you lose is knowledge of the above.  

That's not such an awful thing.  The human condition pre-disposes us to seek out companionship but what if you do it wrong?

Again and again...

The only thing lost from having never loved is knowledge of the pain from screwing it up.

That "Courage" thing is best left to the Red Shirts on Star Trek.  They never seem to have much of a career path aside from keeping Kirk from an untimely end. Kind of like a one-sided relationship.

Over and Over again...

Wisdom in matters of love is often just an admission that you keep screwing up.  Worse, you remember it...ALL OF IT.  Every second of torturous uncertainty and pain.

I'll never understand why people like to place so much value in pain.  Pain is an annoyance.  If I get a blister on my finger it makes it hard for me to type a blog post.  Aside from fewer boring posts for the hapless reader who stumbles upon them, what possible value do I gain from the wisdom of blisters?

The worst case scenario comes when you mix ignorance and love.  That frequently leads to a thing called "unrequited love."  Which is just another word for "dumbass."  The actual meaning is one that loves without getting love in return.  That anyone would tolerate such a thing to me makes them excellent candidates for the anti-waterboarding detail.  If you can put up with that no amount of dripping will break you.

Perhaps that should be a new recruitment criteria for the military!

Anyone that would willingly inflict that much pain on themselves must enjoy it.

I've enjoyed it, if you can call it that.  No wait, I didn't enjoy it at all...
 I didn't intend to but either my own rose colored glasses got involved or I was led down a path.  Admittedly of my own creation.

That's another lesson.  If you're going to screw up, don't blame anyone but yourself.  You saw the signs and blissfully ignored them. 

Idiot..

I think I'm done with paths, glasses and walking for now.  It gets my shoes dirty and doesn't lead anywhere beneficial in which case the real loss is time.  Something we have so very little of.

I'm not anti-romance, just anti-stupid.

Aint love grand...

Facebook the Homewrecker?

Article first published as Facebook the Home Wrecker? on Technorati.
Note: This is the original edit.

The popular media has found a new scapegoat for our personal failings and of course it has something to do with the Internet. 

Depending on whose study you're reading,  divorce statistics now show that either  1 in 5 or 1 in 3 cite  the popular social networking site Facebook as the cause. 

How can a website break up a marriage?  According to the studies unfaithful spouses often pursue extramarital relationships via Facebook with relative ease and little consequence.  Reconnecting with an old flame or just fudging marital status to flirt with other users is as simple as a mouse click.

And why not blame Facebook?  If the medium didn't exist none of these failed marriages would have happened, right?  Just as it's ridiculous to blame the lamp that you dropped on your foot for your throbbing big toe so it is with blaming Facebook for your divorce.

 General statistics still show divorce rates hovering in the 50% range which means  a large group of people made the wrong decision at some point with or without Facebook's help .  Blaming the catalyst (aka: Facebook) is nothing less than abdication of personal responsibility. 

The media loves headlines like this and buries the details on page 3.  After all infidelity is boring but add in the Internet and suddenly it's breaking news.   If you're married and pursuing extramarital relationships on Facebook, it's likely you'd be pursuing them without it.

It seems that many enter marriage with little more care than considering the purchase of an automobile.  I'll demonstrate with a equivalency comparison...

price = earning potential

styling = looks

performance = use your imagination...

cargo capacity = wants kids

safety = not an axe murderer

resale = alimony

With such a short list it's no surprise so many marriages fail.  Is it really such a revelation that an unfaithful spouse is caught flirting on Facebook if your entire relationship is based on such limited information? 

Divorce is a very mechanical process; full of formulae, legal claims and plenty of  personal liability to go around.  Intangibles like communication, shared interests and mutual respect can't be quantified by a cold algorithm.  It follows then, that blaming a website for the failure of your relationship exists in the realm of pure fallacy.  Facebook is a means not a cause.