So I have this profile on Eharmony.com. Yeah. Don’t ask. It’s a long story. I’ll end up telling you of course but I rather get all this information out before you’re able to make that smirk on your face…that one you’re making right now… So stop it. So about this profile. I answer a ba-gillion questions that help narrow down my personality and compatibility with other “single” men out there. Questions that range from “How old are you?” and “How important is it that your spouse be around your same age?” to “What ethnicity are you willing to date?” and “How important is your spouse’s sex drive?” Talk about getting down to the nitty gritty people. I found myself cringing with each question I answered as I had to dig down deep into myself and learn what I would actually want in a partner, as well as wondering if any different answer to the right or left would deter me from meeting my soul mate…via cyberspace. 35 minutes later, I finished answering my “free” questionnaire and with a click of a mouse I am able to not only sum up my complete personality, but was matched with four possible “soul mates” around my neighborhood. Today, I received 14 new “soul mate” matches through my email and five “photo nudges” (that’s when your possible “match” made a request to see a photo of you…which is the all most important factor in this game of who-wants-to-meet-a-complete-stranger-that-claims-to-be-what-is-missing-from-your-life-and-hopefully-they’re-not-ugly-extravaganza). I have yet to upload a photo. I’m scared. Really scared. Is this what “love” has become? A simple questionnaire that seems to comprehend all that encompasses my entire being? If that’s true, Emily Dickinson didn’t have to write a plethora of poems by the windowsill about wonderment, seclusion and long lost loves. Romeo and Juliet could have definitely benefited from online dating as they were CLEARLY not meant to be together with all the “plague on both your houses” and (Director “Baz” Luhrmann’s version, and by far one of my favorite movies of all time) poison drinking, gun slinging, fist fights, and car chases. And for you younger readers who go by Twilight and Nicholas Sparks books, movies and quotes…basically everyone’s life could have been saved had they only stuck to their “type” based on compatibility. I, however, refuse to believe that my soul mate is on the other end of a simple mouse-click. Don’t we all need to go through that heart-wrenching break-up? Finding our true mate, though I’ve been known to have worn black on every Valentines Day for the past two years, shouldn’t be difficult, right? Finding them this simple, just seems like…cheating. I interviewed some of my closest family, friends, and some complete strangers to ask them “what is love?” and “what does it mean to be in love with someone?”. 99.9% of them looked away uncomfortably and flustered up as if I were asking them to strut down a runway in their birthday suit at Bryant Park. “Oh my gosh, what is the big deal people…seriously?” I said to myself, hopefully, and not heard through my eyes. It’s amazing how we think, act, feel, see, hear, aspire, sing, write, play, dance, and talk all about love all day long but when it comes down to someone having to break it down word for word, we get tongue tied, embarrassed, and vice versa. After the initial atomic bomb shock-of-a-question had settled into my interviewees’ minds and they noticed I was seriously asking them this. They warmed up and started to answer, here are some of my favorites:
“I believe a romantic love starts with yourself. Knowing who you are, what your values are, what brings you joy and peace, what your true fears are, what you want to become, and being happy with who you are as an individual. Without truly loving yourself first you can never truly love another. That other should compliment all of your strengths and weakness, bend when you want to break, and lift you up in times of celebration. When together, two who truly love each other, glow in the darkness and conquer all.” Sara, 24.
“”Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. By Robert Heinlein” Lana, 32.
“Love to me is being caring and compassionate. To love someone is to feel what they feel and caring about them even if it means simply lending an ear…. Not expecting to have solutions but just listening and understanding both in exciting times and rough times….” Claire, 23.
“I believe that real love grows with time, the result of respect and admiration that can only come from really knowing someone. If you’re lucky, love is what grows out of infatuation.” Christy, 32.
“To be in love with someone means to have made the decision at some point to allow yourself to feel everything. It means you’ve allowed yourself to trust the other person in your most vulnerable states. Being in love is an act on your part; it’s your willingness to allow yourself to be raw, open and honest.” Val, 24.
“Love is…. That gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach that something BIG is about to happen, but you’re never really sure what that big event will be. And then BAM! It hits you and takes you on a journey that is profoundly personal and yet incredibly universal. No words are capable of expressing it and no performance will ever truly capture its essence; but everyone knows what you mean when you say or write the word ‘Love’. To be in love with someone: The most profound love is the love a parent holds for their child. It humbles us completely. The quote by Elizabeth Stone comes closest to what it feels to be a parent: ‘Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.’” Nina, 41.
My dreadlocked, Caucasian, upper-class, feminist, glitter eye-shadow wearing, against-arm-pit-shaving, hippie college professor at Blank University taught this class called Social Movements. It was THE best and most thought-provoking class I had ever attended, and did so willingly every week. We read this book called Days of War Nights of Love which is a collection of political, social and philosophical essays written by an anarchist’s collective called CrimethInc. Also known as CWC (CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective or CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Ex-Collective), they are a “decentralized anarchist collective of autonomous cells”. They were established in the mid-1990’s to help campaign against globalization and representative democracy in favor of community organizing. Now I am liberal, as liberal as can get. I’m always the “devil’s advocate” when it comes to discussing issues with my proud Republican father, and the “but why?” person at the dinner table that people just want to strangle. But let me tell you, this book is very entangling. It made me stop many times with each page turned to go “Huh…” with a squint of my eyebrows and pursing of my lips. So that Eharmony.com profile? It was a dare, I swear. And I just wanted to see what was out there. But as the days go on, and I get more and more “soul mates” adding up in my inbox (five more since writing this piece) it just seems so fabricated. So lost, even though they’re “found!” Not saying the theory of it all is wrong, as we are by far the busiest bunch of bees in the world and barely have time to go to the doctor’s office or pay our bills, let alone fall in love. And when we do think about it, love is dangerous. It is unpredictable. It’s passionate and forgiving. It’s its own walking and talking irony…love is patient, love is kind (my favorite synopsis)…and we can probably go on and on for days. But the one thing I noticed love to be is “a feeling”. A feeling like no other. A feeling that, if lucky, you’ll experience once or twice in your life. We need to go through the hurt and pain of relationships in order to find, mostly ourselves, and hopefully someone to walk next to in this journey called life.
-Kristen Nemoto
