Wiggling toes = definitely in love

So I was talking to my friend the other day and he informed me that our mutual buddy is getting married.

In that moment, me and celebrity hype-man  Lil Jon said the following in unison: “What?!?!”

Apparently, this guy has only been dating the girl for half a year and now he’s engaged to her. When asked why he’s marrying her so quickly, his answer was simple but made me think for days:

“The second I saw her, I knew right away.”

Apparently, she said the same thing.

So two people meet each other and thought: “this person is the one for me” and now they’re getting married.

This got me thinking for a few days about how I’m supposed to find my girlfriend:

So the first thing we have to talk about is Predestination.

Predestination is a school of thought in Religion made famous by a guy named John Calvin:

Little known fact: Calvin was also a member of Wreckx-n-Effect

So this is what Predestination is all about: Calvin believed that the moment you were born, your fate was already decided by God: whether or not you’re going to Heaven or Hell. Everything you do in your life is all according to God’s plan so nothing you do will change where you’ll eventually end up.

This is good news if God decided that you’re ending up in Heaven.
This is really bad news if you’re destined to go to Hell.

So, this pretty much takes away the concept of free-will since you can’t change your lot.
What’s funny is that you’d think that if people believed that they can’t control their lives, they’d do whatever the hell they wanted. In fact, the opposite occurred among the Calvinists. Despite this belief, Calvinists were known to be extremely God-fearing and good because they believed that if they were really good, God might give them a sign/warning of where they’re supposed to end up. That’s the funny thing about people – you can get them to do anything when you hang eternal damnation over our heads.

Now we’ll take this and apply it towards relationships –> on one hand, you can see relationships like the way Calvinists see predestination: If God determines that you’re supposed to end up with your partner, then you really don’t have to do anything. Just live your life as dictated by God and let life run its course.You don’t really need to make an effort to cut your hair or go out to meet people since you’ll meet your soul mate somehow. I’m also guessing that this would mean that you’ll know when you’re in love since it’s just going to happen…which is why I find it hard to believe in this stuff.

You see, I have a bit of a problem: I really don’t know when I’m supposed to be in love.

I’m sure if I asked my friend, he’d give me his useless answer: “You’ll just know”

I think about this all the time: How do you “just know?” – again, one time I was talking to an ex-coworker and he was telling me about his best friend and roommate. He said that after interviewing roommates throughout the entire day, his future best friend knocked on his door and the moment they saw each other, he “just knew” that they were going to be friends.

It’s hard to take that story straight up without factoring watered down things such as hindsight bias.

Again, how do you know when you’re in love?

To get some guidance, I started watching a show devoted to falling in love: “The Bachelor” where a harem of women take turns trying to seduce some guy with a nice smile and a cardboard personality. So, with nothing else better to do on Monday evenings, I’ve incorporated wasting two hours of my life watching “The Bachelor” while I eat a bag of chips.

"What's he got that I don't?" as I sit on my couch eating Doritos in my underwear.

It’s very interesting to hear what these girls say. In fact, I think we should play a game on what these girls say:

Bachelor Family Feud:

The top 5 things these girls say on the Bachelor:

5. “I came here to fall in love”
4. “I think I’m falling in love”
3. “I’m really falling for him”
2. “I think I’m in love”
1. “I’ve never felt this way before…I’m in love”

Every time I watch this show, I always compare it to a group of highschool kids trying pot for the first time:

“Dude, let’s try and get high”
“I think I’m getting high”
“I think I feel it”
“I’m high”
“I’ve never felt this way before”

Falling in love is like a high everyone chases and hopes that when they catch it, it’s gonna make them feel better.

So, again, how do you know when you’re in love? When you feel good? When you can’t feel your fingers? When time goes by so slowly?

Surely, knowing you’re in love just can’t be a physical thing, if so then every drop of ecstasy and cocaine should be a shot of love. Maybe they should have crackheads on the Bachelor next time.

Maybe it’s just not physical, it’s emotional as well…this person makes me feel good therefore I’m in love with him/her. So what draws the line between love and friendship? My friends make me feel good but I’m not putting a ring on it. Maybe love is more complicated than that – I think to better understand the concept of love, we have to do some big-picture mind fucking…we have to re-evaluate the concept of the language.

Since I’m typing in English, I’m assuming that we all have a fairly good grasp of English knowledge here – for those of you who’s only language is English, this might be hard for you to understand but there are feelings and situations that occur in this world that the English language can’t capture…simply because it has no word for it. Just because you have no word for it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, you ethnocentric bastard. So, when it comes to love, there are other languages that capture different varieties of love that English fails to capture.

I think love is a grey area in everything – friendship, family and anything else in this world loves on some kind of love, I just don’t know what it is.

So falling in love might be a physical and an emotional thing…it can also be luck.

Luck that you both met each other thinking each other is “the one”. Luck that both your families happened to know each other and introduced you two love birds. Luck that you kept your marriage together for 10 years…before you divorce.
It’s not luck that 40% of marriages end in divorce.
It’s marriage breakdown.
I always wondered for couples that eventually divorced, if they also thought “this is the one” when they first met their mate. If the thought of ever hating this person crossed their minds on their wedding day. There I go being a party pooper with my thoughts.

Jon and Kate has given America 8 future strippers/over-compensating bodybuilders

So, with so much questions and little answers…it sure seems like this love business is a complicated thing. We can sit here all day and talk about stats and theories but at the end of it, someone can just throw John Calvin into the mix and throw all rationality out the window.

How are you supposed to know when you’re in love?

I don’t know.