Me Without You

There is an image we all have, persistent even if we choose to revile it, of the contentment of two. It's not a bad thing, and we certainly don't gain much by pushing against it and screaming. It's good to have hope. 

But there's a point beyond which thinking of our hope becomes a sort of a mixed thing. Do we need to remind ourselves of desires and circumstances not present? Of course delving into troubles can be a mixed thing too. 

Into this sort of background steps something like "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates". Some people don't want to go see the Rise of the Haters movies they're always showing, at least not exclusively, because of how little it says about being in love. But some people also have this experience of not having it, of that good love story being a little soured by the condition that it reminds them more of the cousin they last saw at the wedding, than whatever the result of their own striving has been. 

Something like this, a grand display of all the failures and fiascos of dating, reminds us that we all have options. We don't need to give up hope, but rushing only leads to nasty stories and scars. "You need a date to avoid looking like a fool", people seem to tell us. And you see where that got him. In a way, it makes you feel better. 

It's like that Rachel Platten song: "I wish my heart would stop.... Beating me up." You think it's what somebody else says or does, but it's really you, your heart. Your heart chooses how to react, even if sometimes it's out of habit. It wasn't that you were single: it was when you decided what that meant. 

Of course someone told you, in essence, that you'd always be the fool and never amount to anything if you weren't stabilized by a relationship, but you know how much that can hurt, and you can know how unnecessary it is not to be "independent of the good opinion of other people", as Wayne Dyer likes to say. 

The movie is largely about unconventional romance and people who don't feel like they can have the legitimizing influence of a marriage on their sexuality, but I think it's also largely about single people, the "I need a date" people, because for us (too) the perfect never seems to arrive. It's not just that there is a me before I meet you, it's that there is a me that does not seem to ever find you. 

I think real love finds you, sometimes when you're not asking for it. I don't know why. We all know the story of letting yourself finally fall for someone who's been growing on you, but sometimes you need one for not flailing around when nothing lies that way. You can chase after the trappings of power, to prove to God that you're somebody, but probably the most you'll find is somebody with the same problems as you, and a circular path back to where you started. 

Of course the movie makes you feel better by showing you a good relationship evolving out of a bad one, but by not being perfect, and yet it's still fine, it can give you hope in general. As much as I do not want to just be a partisan for my youth, I think we absorb a lot of the negative things that age tells us, about being either totally stable or a total failure. It's intimidating. 

Living single is hard. Living single can be empty. "Love hurts. Love scars...." But the sun still shines in the morning, even after you've convinced yourself that it won't. 

It's like what I interpret the Gita as saying: it's right to try, but good not to be attached to the outcome. 

I also generally have a high opinion of Anna Kendrick. 

You have that pain video playing every time a wedding comes up, which is always, but sometimes you've just got to delete that memory. 

Things go wrong, but you can set it right; take the power in your hands. 

"By the power invested in me by 'be your own deacon dot com'" I submit this review.