I have a soft spot for beautiful men who also happen to be “charming.” This weakness of mine has caused me many heartbreaks. When I finally I asked one of them, “why do people say you are not boyfriend-material?” he replied that he didn’t want to be tied down because, as he put it, “life is too short!”
Life is, indeed, too short. One must maximize his or her pleasure. One has to sleep with a different person every single night, just so one can hear how skinny she looks or how big his penis is. It is obviously not enough to get the attention of one person – one must be surrounded by many, different beautiful men or women to be vaguely impressive for one’s peers and feel good about oneself. After all, it is not the quality that matters, but the quantity. It is not the depth that matters, but the looks. It is not enough that one is happy, but that one appears desirable, popular and “has game.” Who cares if you can’t have conversations longer than five minutes? Your friends would not know that; they only notice how sexy your arm-candy looks or how charming you are with people. Who needs meaningful connections? Who even has time for deep, soulful conversations? We live in the fast paced technological age, where sentimentality is drowned by the new generations of iTouch, iPhone and iPad. Never mind that the functionalities are basically the same, and we are generating e-waste while screaming “environmentalism.” We have to have them all so we can quantify our status in some visible way.
The next thing you hear, of course, is that Stanford kids don’t date. I mean, why would we, if we could hardly be satisfied with one iGadget? Getting to know someone obviously takes up way too much time, something a Stanford student does not have. After academics, extracurriculars, internships and graduate school applications, who has time for such abstractions as love? In addition, we could not possibly be Mr. or Ms. Popular if we just have one friend who knows all of our in and outs. We have to have 100+ superficial friends who would laugh at us if we were to throw up on ourselves, or step on our toes to get in front of us in line. It’s called networking – Silicon Valley entrepreneurial style.
Superficial? Sure, but can we really blame someone for having commitment-phobia or intimacy issues? In a world where we can have our coffee served straight, with soy, skim or whole milk, perhaps it is too much to ask for someone to know if he or she likes blond, brunette or black hair…or even no hair at all. In a world where we aspire to be people who can’t leave their Blackberries during their vacations, perhaps it is too much to ask for people to enjoy each others’ company with tea, silence and stars instead of “efficient” exchanges of banter and information. Perhaps we are too busy with work, too dazzled by the media fantasy of speedy love and money to get to know ourselves as we are and figure out who and what we want. Everything must have a result. Dating? It is, unfortunately, a too low-yield game. So we should just count our sex partners instead. Sorry college ladies, this game is not for you, unless you don’t mind being called a “slut.” Only guys can be the “players.”
In a society in which we unfairly value guys for not knowing who they are and what they want sexually or romantically, and condemn women for exploring their sexuality, I am fed up with people who cling to meaningless encounters as if these were some deep-sea treasure. There is a reason why people call it “one night stand” – for the novelty and brevity. If one’s life is filled with such meaningless “one night stands,” it is just plain sad. We get to be “the man” at the cost of real emotional connections.
If life really were too short, I certainly would not want to waste my time on Mr. or Mrs. Wrong. Yet some of us waste our time and energy on people who barely brush us by. We want to be in the center of the spotlight, having people whom we don’t care about “praise” us, and feel for a brief moment less insecure and less empty. We attribute it to the glorious youth that we are able to “get so much [different] ass,” that we are “living the life” and have so many friends; yet none of these people have made a difference in our lives nor have we in theirs. We do it so we can avoid noticing how empty it really feels inside – how we are so numb from or afraid of all the heartbreaks that we close ourselves so we do not have to be vulnerable. GET REAL AND GROW UP! Cut off the meaningless shit so we can make time for something meaningful – something with true value. After all, “life is too short.”
Think your life is too short? Then don’t waste time by sending Yanran an e-mail at [email protected].