Think Singles "Can't Find Love?"

Consider this.

I’ve never lived among Tibetan monks, but I’ve never heard that I “can’t find wisdom.” I’ve never studied at Oxford, but I’ve never heard that I “can’t find truth.” I’ve never seen the sun rise over the Swiss Alps, but I’ve never heard that I “can’t find beauty.” However, single people frequently encounter the culture’s suggestion that they “can’t find love.”

Wisdom, truth, beauty, love – they dwell within us and move through us. They are not scarce, divisible quantities stored in one location, institution, or very specific form of human relationship. To treat them as such is to suggest that rather than birthrights, these things are rewards for being a palatable human being, for deftly navigating the system of carrots and sticks devised by the society in which one lives. After all, being “chosen” to be loved by a “viable” partner is seen as one of the rewards of “having done everything right.”

And the next step when so “chosen,” when love has been “found,” is to cheerily agree that life is best lived as a domestic-centered, government licensed, multi-decade three-legged race. Only now, the endless advice pivots from “how to find love” to “how to keep love alive.” Because the genuine love that brings two people together is like a wild animal - when institutionalized and caged, it often sickens and weakens substantially.

This highlights one of the core questions each of us faces daily. Will we keep the wisdom, truth, beauty, and love that dwells within us and moves through us wild and free, maximizing their ability to do the work in the world we were meant to do? Or will we be disabused of those birthrights by cultural and political machinery that dangles them in front of us like gateway drugs to access the “good life,” which turns out to be nothing more than taking your place as a cog in the wheel of a merciless status quo.

Single people, keep your love wild and free and remember you have nothing to “find.”