i notice with dismay that everyone here is married or practically so, just like in minnesota. i think i would have been more dismayed about this when i was more idealistic, before the cynicism crept into this brain of mine. but i seem to have lost my intuitive tendency to boldly go after the girl i want no matter what the circumstances are, which is overall certainly a good thing for the world and probably also a good thing for me. in any case i suppose i'm in a holding pattern right now, and it isn't a bad one.
it seems that by my age, people are past ditching current adequate relationships for possible great ones. because it's true -- most relationships don't actually turn out. say you're happy with your current life; are you really going to meet someone who, given how hard it is to predict how relationships will go without living them, has a greater than 50% chance of improving your future life projection? no way. better to stick with someone you have a happy life with. i think my rational and emotional understanding of this cost/benefit analysis is what's preventing me from being at all catalytic with regards to the attached girls i may or may not be interested in.
meanwhile death is hovering all around me. people from my class are dying. friends' friends are in comas or have parkinson's or whatever. it's having much more of an effect on me than i expected; no one particularly close to me, but i keep thinking of these people and being sad that they won't see the future. sometimes it puts my life and problems in perspective; sometimes it throws them out of perspective.
i was considering the question the other day, and i realized that right now i have no idea what i want in a special lady. it's always seemed clear to me -- the big things, of course, are constant: intelligence, intuition, perception. but the relative needles are oscilatting crazily, and the little things are changing. and frankly i don't even know if the big things are constant right now. what i know is that my heart is more ambivalent than ever. it feels like some sort of big personality type shift, to a much less extreme personality type. i think i'm becoming the sort of person who could be happy with any number of different situations, activities, or people.
of course who knows how i will feel tomorrow.