Pro: Not arguing about ridiculous crap

Recently a friend passed along a website to me called “Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About.” (http://www.mil-millington.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/things.html). It is one of those websites that you find yourself consumed with for hours, wondering how you have lived your life up until that moment without having discovered it earlier. In a word, it’s brilliant.

While I strongly encourage you to visit it, I will sum it up as, well, a list of things this man and his girlfriend have argued about. He is a wry, sardonic English man (is there any other kind?) and she is an eccentric German female with a penchant for collecting plants and asking inane questions. It is high, high comedy.

While the website manages to somehow paint an endearing picture of the two of them and their endless spats, it was somewhere around the second hour of reading recants of the ridiculous arguments this couple has had that I began to appreciate my condition. What condition? As my Grandma would put it, that of being “still single” – as in “Are you still single?”

My Grandma attributes my singlehood with my inability to “keep a house” (and, judging by my mountains of laundry and fridge filled with condiments and beer, she might be onto something); however, I prefer to think that it is because I’ve grown increasingly selective as I’ve gotten older. And, well, I just don’t want to argue about ridiculous crap.

People always say that, after a break-up, they only remember the good times. And I guess for me it’s the same way… for a couple of weeks. However, after a month or so and whatever love potion I was drinking is out of my system, I begin to look back on the relationship with a mix of astonishment and bewilderment, remembering the ridiculous things we’ve argued about.

Now, anyone that knows me knows that I am no picnic. I remember everything, I think debating is “fun,” and my sarcasm could bring down entire empires. I’m the girl that, in the midst of a shouting match, feels inclined to correct her boyfriend’s grammar (Yes, I did this, but only once – countless times I sat silent as he hurled grammatically incorrect insults at me. And once even accused me of being a “lyer” over text message… A lyer!)

It is most likely because of my stunning combination of sarcasm, stubbornness, and ability to wield logic like a weapon that I tend to attract equally strong-willed men. At first I love that they can keep me on my toes and challenge me. I enjoy when they point things out that I hadn’t noticed. I like the sexy sparring. But then when we’re standing in aisle 6 of the Super Fresh arguing – actually arguing – about the benefits of a 2-for-1 sale on tomato sauce and throwing around terms like “price per unit” and “economic efficiency” I begin to wish that I was dating someone a bit more easy-going.

Or no one at all.

I’ll never forget the moment I decided it was over with my long-term college boyfriend. We had gotten into an argument about something – I really can’t even remember what – and it had escalated to the point where he’d lost his cool and begun to flat-out insult me. “Don’t call me names,” I’d said to him, to which he’d responded – brilliantly – “I’m not saying you are a bitch; I’m saying you’re acting like one.” Hard to argue with that logic, huh?

Well, since this was the umpteenth time he’d reverted to hitting below the belt in the heat of battle – an issue we’d previously discussed and agreed to avoid – I took a stand. I would not speak to him until he apologized. Usually it was I that tried to smooth things over because I could not stand the stomach-twisted-in-knots feeling of an unresolved conflict. However, I stuck to my guns this time.

Finally, after four days of waiting him out, he showed up, tail between his legs. He hugged me, he kissed me, he told me he loved me. But, no, dammit he owed me an apology. I told him as much. So, he looked down sadly, shame in his eyes, and then my sweet and loving boyfriend said with all the remorse in the world, “I’m sorry you made me be mean to you.”

I’m sorry. You MADE me. Be mean to you.

In the words of Liz Lemon, this, ladies, is a deal breaker.

And while my relationships have certainly grown more mature and harmonious since that fine moment, there are still times, as in every relationship, when I have found myself in the throes of what can only be described as a fight about ridiculous crap. You forgot to do this, you shouldn’t have said that, you never do this, bluh bluh bluh. They can consume hours, days. The heartache, the drama, the soul-searching. Who’s right? Are you right? Is he right? Were you right before but now you’re not? Are we even arguing about the same thing anymore?

It’s exhausting.

And when you’ve lived alone for a certain amount of time and you’re used to just doing things a certain way without anyone else having an opinion, sometimes it just seems a hell of a lot easier to keep it that way. Throw your crap on the floor. Run the dishwasher half-empty. Sleep in the middle of the bed. Whatever.

Sure, okay, there are pros to a relationship. And maybe not dying alone is one of them. Maybe that even overshadows the pain of a few fights every now and then. And I do have fantasies of reading the morning paper over hot mugs of coffee or jet-setting off to Paris or Rome for a long weekend with my Prince Charming. It would be nice to have a companion with which to share life’s adventures.

But being single means never having to make someone be mean to you.

We were there.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or have somehow managed to insulate yourself against sports news, you probably already know that the Phillies won the pennant last night. For the second year in a row, they are headed back to the World Series – a feat that seemed nearly impossible in the dismal days of Phillies failure (or, “The David Bell Era,” as I like to refer to it).

The Phillies had manhandled the Dodgers, winning the series 4 games to 1. Seeming to sense that victory was close, the Phils left nothing to chance and won the game 10-4, a score that included four home runs by our boys. Citizen’s Bank Park was a packed house, the crowd a sea of Phillies red, their trademark “rally towels” spinning flashes of white in the air. Every hit, walk, and run rang with euphoria through the stadium.

After Shane Victorino had caught Ronnie Belliard’s fly ball to record the final out in the ninth and the win was official, fans poured out onto the streets from every corner of Philadelphia. Cheering, clapping, whistling, the honking of horns, sounded happily through the October night air. Everyone headed toward the obvious destination: Broad Street, where the collecting crowd doubled by the minute, brought there to cheer, hug, pump their fists in the air, and just share in the joy together.

I was among them, deep in the heart of South Philly, where even old women sat in lawn chairs on their modest porches and cheered to passing fans. A burly, leather-faced man stood on his stoop, his arm outstretched to high-five people as they went by. Passengers leaned out of windows of moving cars, yelling “Go Phillies!” to the gathering crowds.

It sounds corny to say, but the night was swelling with love. Love for the Phillies, love for each other.

That’s the thing about sports: its amazing unifying power. Whether you’re an 80-something-year-old woman clapping delightedly to fans rushing by or a teenager, face painted red, slapping hands with strangers as your triumphant yell pierces the night air, you’re experiencing the same thing. The same rush of emotions, the same feeling like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself. It doesn’t matter if you ordinarily would have nothing in common with the burly man standing on his porch on Ritner Street; tonight you’re high-fiving him like you’re the best of friends.

You could almost feel the night etching itself into our collective consciousness, becoming the stuff of Philly folklore. How Ryan Howard had tied Lou Gherig’s record for RBIs in consecutive playoff games and won the NLCS MVP award. How, after hearing that LA’s Manny Ramirez, replaced in the ninth inning of Game 4, had been in the shower when the Phillies had come back to win, fans had doned shower caps and held up signs telling him to get back in the shower. How the police had greased down the light poles lining Broad, hoping to thwart jubilant fans’ attempts at climbing them like they had the year before.

The night was a warm one for October, 63 degrees. The sky was clear, stars poking through the urban light pollution. The cityscape was lit up with red lights, even the buildings getting in on the celebration.

And it felt like everyone in Philadelphia was on Broad Street experiencing it together.

It’s hard to put into words why sports matter. Logically, of course, putting so much energy, emotion, and passion into a group of men over whose fate you have no control and over a game that’s implications boil down to some hardware and the right to brag a little is just plain old silly. But they do matter. They matter to millions. And anyone standing on Broad Street in Philadelphia last night can attest to that.

And for this girl, who grew up listening to Harry the K and Whitey Ashburn call games as long summer days rolled into long summer nights, those games were a thread that ran through the years. Whether I was a child, watching through adoring eyes as my Dad sat on the porch after work listening to the games on the radio, or I was a teenager and the games were playing quietly in the background as I got my first taste of love, the Phillies were a part of it. I knew the sound of Harry’s trademark “It’s Outta Here!” call like I knew the sound of my own mother’s voice.

And so, somehow, those games took on a meaning greater than the word ‘game’ suggests. I mourned with the rest of the Philly Phaithful when Joe Carter hit that infamous home run. I suffered with all of the world of sports as the strike of 1994 ruined our season, and, for a time, baseball itself. I celebrated the signing of  Jim Thome and all the wins it promised to us. I blamed Ed Wade for every losing season, for all of the world’s problems. I watched as The Vet was reduced to rubble and Citizen’s Bank Park was erected.

Every April I was born anew, my hope restored, sure that this year would be the year. I celebrated every victory, I bemoaned every loss.

And so, last night, as I walked over fallen autumn leaves along Broad Street, among the hordes of other fans drawn there to celebrate our beloved Phils fortune, it occurred to me that this was what we had been waiting for. This was the sum of a thousand summer games, the hopes of dozens of Opening Days, of every time we’d listened to the game on 1210 as we drove through the evening, banging on the steering wheel and cheering to ourselves when our team had scored a run. Of learning useless stats, of speculating over free agent acquisitions, of debating the managerial skills of Fregosi versus Francona.

Of course, last year when we won it all, it was deliverance in its purest form. But for some reason, this year it’s so much clearer. Maybe it’s because, as Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer said today, this may be the Greatest Philadelphia Sports Team Ever. And last year wasn’t a fluke, a blip on the radar of baseball greatness, but was the result of all those years of trades and signings and tinkering with the lineup to get the formula just right.

And, if that’s true, that means that this may never happen again, at least not in my lifetime. It took 100-something years to get our first world championship. Then another 28 years to get another. And for us to – maybe – have two in a row? It’s unfathomable. It’s like catching lightning in a bottle. Sure, maybe we’ll win another. Maybe this is the start of a dynasty, like the New York Yankees’. But maybe not.

Maybe next year, another year older, the bats won’t move so fast, the pitches will slow down a bit. Maybe we’ll never see Lee command the mound like he has again. Maybe injuries will take down our beloved Utley or Rollins or Hamels. Maybe we’ll spend the coming years trying fruitlessly to put together another team like this magical group.

And so, without a crystal ball, all we have is now. This team, this moment, this victory.

With this thought, I watched the crowds gather on Broad Street and the cars honk and the amateur fireworks flash across the night sky. And I let my mind race ahead years, decades, to a day when I could say, yeah, I remember the Phillies of 2008 and 2009.  I remember when they greased the light poles on Broad. I was there.

Contently Ever After?

This summer it seems that I have had an extraordinary number of conversations with friends in long term relationships who were experiencing the same quandary: They’d been with their significant others for years and just weren’t sure if their plus one was the one.

They all fit relatively the same description: mid to late twenties, been dating for 3+ years, and still get along, still have fun, are well-suited… but they feel like something is missing. My friend Maureen explained to me how she felt about her boyfriend of four years, Paul: “I just don’t know if I want to marry him… and I think if he was the one, I’d know.”

Like so many others, she doesn’t want to break up because what if, horror of horrors, she was wrong, and then she’s lost the man of her dreams? But how can she marry unless she is sure? And therein lies the rub.

On one hand, this is terrific. With 50% of marriages ending in divorce, it’s nothing if not prudent to take stock in the relationship before exchanging “I do”s. And the kind of self-actualization required to ask yourself those hard questions about what is right for you is something I generally admire, if not encourage.

But – on the other hand – have we gotten to the point that we don’t know how to be happy? Or, more accurately, content? More and more, this seems to be the calling card of Generation Y. We have been given so many choices that we can’t make one. We don’t know how to do anything unless it makes us overwhelmingly, intoxicatingly thrilled. To us, “settling” is the ultimate crime, a betrayal to ourselves, to our happiness, to the life we’re supposed to be living.

According to a 2007 article from the Boston Globe, divorce rates are on the decline and are at their lowest point since 1970. The writer attributed this dip to marrying later, and choosing better. But are we just replacing divorce figures with a population in quasi-marriages (living together, sharing their lives like a married couple, but not sharing a name) who either break-up after the relationship hits a slump, or stays together in relationship pergatory, paralyzed by choice?

As Chuck Klosterman wrote in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, “…whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living.”  And so we don’t know how to live.

But what’s the alternative? Marry the next man we see? Certainly not. But perhaps it’s time to adjust our expectations. No, no, no, I don’t mean settle. Well, maybe I do, but just a little. Maybe we as a generation – as a society – need to begin to accept the fact that we won’t have everything. That we can’t. That our jobs, our marriages, our every waking moment, will not be an extension of our eternal glowing, beating happiness. Maybe we need to set aside the idea that there is out there, somewhere “the one” with whom every day will feel like a waking dream, with whom we’ll never grow tired, with whom we’ll know.

Maybe there is something to be said for finding someone who makes us pretty damn happy an awful lot of the time and making it work with them. Riding out the boredom. Finding happiness in the familiar, not just the new and exciting. Beaming with happiness not because he surprised you with a moonlit picnic in the park, but because he remembered to buy the whole wheat spaghetti that you prefer. Maybe we can learn to be content.

Maybe. I don’t know. But for now I need to go cancel my date for Friday… I just don’t feel that spark, you know?

Facebook alert: Everyone’s life is amazing, except yours.

My definition of success changes on an almost daily basis.

Today it’s this: 2 pm on a Friday, sitting at my table, typing on my laptop, with Damien Rice playing softly in the background, and the rain beating on the windows of my Philadelphia apartment. Or, more accurately, the freedom to enjoy those things.

But it was only days ago when a good friend and I had swapped emails lamenting the feeling of being “left behind” by our contemporaries. Like life is passing us by and we’re not participating. Not a day goes by that I don’t log on to Facebook and see some kind of update that a friend has gotten engaged or a former classmate has gotten a raise. My news feed feels like a daily reminder that I am not reaching these milestones, that I am being left behind.

As Rachel Green famously bemoaned in the first season of Friends as she waited tables at the coffee shop, “…Everyone I know is either getting married, or getting promoted, or getting pregnant, and I’m getting coffee. And it’s not even for me!”

Of course, as I remind myself, life isn’t – or shouldn’t be – measured by achieving artificial milestones. Anyone can get married. Hell, even Britney Spears managed it – twice. And having an important job title doesn’t mean that the job is fulfilling. But Facebook doesn’t offer status changes based on personal growth. And you can’t register at Macy’s for changing career paths. Without these tangible achievements, sometimes it becomes difficult to measure your own “success.”

But why do I – an educated, worldly, and introspective 27-year-old girl – occasionally get caught in the trap of feeling like a failure compared to those whose so-called success is not necessarily measured in education or actualization, but in managing to obtain a marriage license and have unprotected sex? Especially when I am not even sure that I want those things – at least not yet.

Or why do I compare myself to those that I graduated law school with that are making six-figures at corporate law firms where their minimum billable hours leave little hope of seeing the light of day, and so much of their jobs involve navigating the political hierarchy and the super egos of firm life? Isn’t that what I hated? Isn’t that why I used to want to cry on Monday mornings on my commute into work?

*****

But then there’s this: driving back from Atlantic City where I covered a deposition for a New York firm.  A little prep, a long drive, a routine deposition, and cash in the bank. It put the free in freelance. It’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I’m listening to the radio with the windows rolled down and decide it’s time to stop off at my old law firm to pick up some books that I’d left there and have been delaying picking up. Out of laziness or shame, or a little of both.

As soon as I got there – literally the moment I walked into the office – I knew I was a different person.

Everything was the same. The line of business cards on the receptionist’s desk. The smell of warm paper stacking up on the copier tray. The goosebumps on my arm as AC vents churned out cold, recycled air in an unventilated building. And that quiet, indescribable vacuum of joy as everyone hurried to meet their daily billable hour quota so they can power down their computers and head for the door.

And as F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “I was within and without.” I spent three years at that office. I knew the rhythm of my heels on the linoleum floor of the copy room. I knew the sound of the partner in the office next to mine when he pushed his keyboard in and stood up, his leather chair squeaking softly. And the way I, and all the associates in the neighboring offices, braced against that sound, waiting to be harassed about a discovery deadline or an unconfirmed motion date. Or the sound of his top left drawer opening followed by the familiar jingle as he retrieved his keys at the end of the day and departed from the office, our collective sigh of relief blowing silently against the chilled office air.

But it wasn’t my life any more. And I knew it never would be again. Those things have been replaced with question marks, with uncertainty, with, at times, doubt. But with possibilities. The possibility that Monday morning could bring contentment. That billable hours wouldn’t be the measurement of my success. That the sound of a drawer opening would mean nothing other than that the drawer was open.

And for today, that’s enough.

For today, I’ll be comforted in my own sense of freedom, the decisions not yet made, detached from anything that can be held or touched, like a gold band or a small, white business card.

My name is Lester Burnham.

Actually it’s not. But like Lester, I have lost something. I too didn’t used to feel this sedated.

I’m beginning to feel like instead of living my life to the fullest, I am doing what Paul Simon calls slip-sliding away. I’m waking up, I’m walking around, I’m sending emails, I’m talking on the phone, I’m driving my car, but it’s all a little… robotic.

I’d like to blame the whole thing on law school — and on most days I do. I mean, what the hell was a creative writing major doing in law school anyway? I didn’t spend the first 22 years of my life penning stories and reading novels so I could be tethered to a desk drafting motions and discovery. That stuff didn’t make me happy, it didn’t inspire me. On some evenings,  I would sit at my desk and look out the window and think, If I die tomorrow, will I be glad that this is how I spent my life? And of course I knew the answer. But then I would get back to ignoring these thoughts, draft my motions, drive home, eat some dinner, watch whatever mindless reality show I had DVR’ed, and go to bed so I could get up and do it all again the next day. That wasn’t living; I was miserable.

But on the days I’m really honest with myself, I know that my job wasn’t the problem. Law school was just a symptom. It was just one decision that I had made in a series of decisions where I didn’t do what I was passionate about, but instead had done what it seemed like I was supposed to do. I was molding my life into something that I thought looked like a life and ignoring what made me feel alive. At some point I started taking the path of least resistance and my own sense of satisfaction was the cost.

But why? When I was a child, I was told that I could be whatever I wanted to be and do whatever I wanted to do. I had a loving, supportive family, a great network of friends, the intelligence and wherewithal to make my dreams come true. So how could I find myself stuck in an unventilated office as the sun slipped below the trees, spending my life doing something that I didn’t give a damn about?

I guess it’s hard to pursue your passions. Hell, it’s hard to even know what your passions are. It’s hard to reach for something that you might not attain that actually matters to you. It’s hard to know that you could fail. It’s hard to remember what made you feel alive before you wore your indifference like a crown. It’s hard to admit that you care about something. It’s hard not to go home at night and turn the TV on and drown in the distraction for a couple of hours. It’s hard to wake up in the morning and realize, My God, this world is a beautiful place.

At some point, life gets a little routine and comfort and predictability and mediocrity become the goals. And we begin to lose the magic of our youth where we played into the gloaming and marveled at the fireflies and dreamed of one day being an astronaut or a lion tamer or a writer.

But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back.