Freethinking for Dummies

Of Skepticism and Love

I am going through my second divorce. The first one was five and a half years ago. That marriage lasted over 17 years. I have friends who keep telling me that the right woman is out there for me. Some say that as soon as I stop looking she will show up in my life, other that l am a loving, caring person and that I deserve to be happy and they are sure that prefect woman for me will come along.

I know my friends are trying to cheer me up and don’t want me to lose hope that I’ll find happiness. Hell, I want to tell myself the same things, because, yes damn-it, I do deserve to be happy, but I know that life doesn’t work that way. I don’t want to get into the gory details about what happened to bring me to this point. Suffice it to say that my love and trust was terribly betrayed to the point where, for a while, I didn’t believe in real love at all, but instead saw love as a selfish way for people to get what they want from someone else. Fortunately, I realized that I still had the capacity to give love without totally selfish motives so I figured that if I could do that, so could others.

Life is not going to give me what I want or need. The universe doesn’t care about my desires, or anything else for that matter. The universe just is. It follows laws that came into being when it did and what ever happens is merely a result of the interactions arising from those laws. The only one or thing that can fulfill my needs and desires is myself. Not in a hedonistic way, but by making the most of what life throws at me. Of course I have plans and dreams, but they are only guides, like a compass needle pointing me in the direction I want to go. How I navigate the landscape that is presented to me as I go is totally dependent on what I see in front of me. We dream, we plan, but ultimately, we react to what is placed in our path.

The good thing is that I still believe that real love, true love, is possible. I still believe that there could be someone out there who would fulfill all of my needs and desires, and I hers. I just think that the chances that I’ll ever meet someone like that are astronomical and I’m too much of a realist to think that there is some kind of universal justice that will someday give me what I desire. The universe is arbitrary and there really is no rhyme or reason to it. We, as humans, are evolved to find patterns where there are none and to assign agency to events in our lives where none exist. Unlike many, I actually find great beauty and solace in this idea. It means that none of us are anymore more special than anything else in this world, and that is a great equalizer.

January 31, 2011 Posted by James Walker | Uncategorized | betrayal, hurt, Life, love, pain, personal, romance | 5 Comments