Although I have no checklist of qualities I want in a lady, the femmes that turn up as highly matched almost invariably represent this profile: A graduate student who reads a lot, is unreligious, values family, enjoys the funnies, is less kinky than average, and is painfully ambitious.
It’s the painfully ambitious part that bothers me. I’ll explain in a second. First, some context is needed.
OkCupid also has what they call an enemy score, which shows you the people who are likely to be the worst matches for you. Again, although I have no checklist of qualities to avoid in a lady, the femmes that turn up as the worst matches almost invariably represent this profile: A girl whose ideal day is spent on the beach with ample cheap beer and whose ideal night has something to do with “crunk.” Her profile demonstrates a lack of interest in either capitalization or punctuation and not uncommonly her photo was taken with a cell phone camera in front of a mirror, often with a neck tilted and/or a suggestive purse-ing of lips. I’m not being judgy; just giving you the visual.
It seems that OkCupid has ordered my matches on a continuum from painfully pleasure-seeking to painfully ambitious, and it thinks my niche is on the ambitious end.
My problem/question is this: Why is there a continuum?
I have a theory that the most interesting and most likeable people are serious about both their work and their fun—but as joint, not separate, things. My parents were recently telling me about their favorite teacher in high school. Everyone agreed that his physics class was both the most difficult and the most enjoyable class they ever had. The teacher expected his students to learn a lot and in a short amount of time, but at the same time he expected them to have a hoot doing it. Why is this so rare and so hard to pull off? That’s probably one of the most important questions you can ask yourself.
But that was just a sidebar because I’m actually going in a different direction with this. Although people who emphasize both work and fun are rare and interesting people, I have a theory that the perfect match for me would be even rarer: someone who values neither.
Values probably isn’t the right word because my ideal match would value (or at least care about) both work and pleasure, but would keep both in what I would call a “healthy” perspective since, being perfect, they would of course regularly ask themselves questions like “what is there to be meaningfully ambitious about?” and “what’s the point of pleasure?”
What I really want (I think) is to see these words in a lady’s profile:
Life – including all my goals and all my feelings – is meaningless. But it’s interesting. Rather than pursuing achievements or feelings or godliness, I just want to be present in this mess. Not passively; actively. I’m not trying to make things better because I don’t know what “better” means. I just want to explore it and live in it while I’m still here. I want to experience happiness and wisdom and generosity and kindness, but not for their own sake. I want to experience them because, like depression and stupidity and anger and cruelty, they are part of the unruly tangle of life.
So, OkCupid, work on that.
In the meantime, some poor, ambitious girl may have to end up settling for me.
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Postscript
Maybe I should marry Joan Didion:
I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package, I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.
