Don’t buy into the myth of “the one”

My uncle hated school as a kid. His loathing of the classroom was at the point where he would… My uncle hated school as a kid. His loathing of the classroom was at the point where he would run away from the bus stop whenever his elementary school bus came into sight and hide in the woods until 3, when he would return home and tell my grandmother about his day, which had actually never taken place.

She would discover the truth when she was contacted by school authorities. To remedy the situation, she ordered my father to escort my uncle to the door of the classroom everyday, ensuring that he didn’t pull any Steve McQueen moves at the last minute. My dad, around 12 years older than my uncle, began talking with the teacher to monitor my uncle’s progress, even going to parent-teacher conferences when my grandmother couldn’t make it.

A decade later, my father and that teacher gave birth to me.

I don’t believe in serendipity or love at first sight. I know that it’s tempting to categorize life with broad thematic strokes. It’s also comforting to think of all the hell and confusion of our social lives as merely the prologue to when the beautiful stranger — planted on earth exclusively for us — sweeps into our lives and solves all of our problems with the ease of a smile. This leaves us to live happily ever after, and to stay in on Saturday nights, watching rented movies and going to bed at 10, content in blissful love.

Life is far too random for this. What drives me crazy are the stories. You know the kind. Roger Ebert calls it “The Meet Cute.” There’s a whole bunch in “When Harry Met Sally,” with the scenes of elderly couples staring into the camera and regaling us losers with how love stormed into their lives like Hurricane Ivan.

They usually go along the lines of, “The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life walked into my father’s ice cream parlor, where I worked, and I told Felix, ‘That girl’s going to be my wife.’ Two weeks later, we were married.”

If I were on AOL Instant Messenger right now, I’d say, “WTF?” Who acts like this? My generation is supposedly irresponsible, but the members of the Greatest Generation apparently put as much thought into the people they married as what sort of shoes they wore — and then went onto happier and lengthier marriages than those of our contemporaries, who spend years on engagement plans and prenuptial agreement negotiations.

Perhaps we have lost something in our zeal for being cautious. We’re a generation built on John Mayer and Neo — forever idolizing “the one.” Your girlfriend dumped you? Don’t worry, our friends assure us — she wasn’t “the one.”

Do we believe that there is only one person capable of making our hearts radiate with joy? Is it better to look at the others the same way that we view foreign cultures and music genres: that it’s best to make sure that we have helped ourselves to a wide selection, so we can be satisfied and settle down? After all, isn’t each new love a thrilling experience? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to make sure that we have experienced all the differences that multiple loves have to offer?

It seems that humans are the only mammals doomed to incessantly wonder if there is someone better out there, someone who is more equipped with what is necessary to make us whole. If we do, in fact, have soul mates, what guarantee do we have that they are the ones we end up with? Should marriage be considered the “be all, end all”?

As long as we’re hung up on finding perfect and flawless people, we are doomed to be forever yearning for more out of our relationships. It is only when we accept the flaws and dents in the guises of the ones we love that we are truly loving them.

Love is just as much a commitment as marriage is. It would be easy to be with someone designed to be with us by some higher power. What would be the challenge in that?

I find that love’s greatest effect is how it motivates us to rise to something greater than the sum of our parts, to delve into ourselves to find new ways to be better for those we don’t deem ourselves worthy of. It is irrational to want to be with the “perfect one” — our goal should be to strive to be perfect for the one we are with.

Send love letters to Daron Christopher at djc14@pitt.edu.