I’m having an existential moment with the latest movie I just watched about one of the most unfathomable survival stories in modern times: the 1972 Andes plane crash. My soul wept in one particular scene: a crash survivor named Numa had just climbed onto a ridge and confronted a sea of the same snow-covered mountains for which he was trying to escape. Even though I was miles away from his kind of predicament, indoors on my cozy couch watching from the screen, I was facing a similar psychological crisis in life: despair. I was shallow breathing in panic for him. I already knew the ending of Society of the Snow, as these plane crash survivors escape the barren vortex of cold and starvation, but I entertained the thought of him not proceeding forward. “Which path are you going to choose, Numa? Are you going to give up or be a solo hero now on that mountain so that you could become a global one 52 years later?
Forget being hungry for tangible food, in that moment he was more than ever hungry for the intangible : the food of determination to maintain faith in God when he was against all odds to live. I could see it in his eyes. I have a similar hunger: dare I say that Numa’s scene felt like escaping my perpetual singledom. I’m on that ridge every day and, whenever I look out, all I see is “snow”: no safe opportunities to even place myself in the vacinity of men and no eligible bachelors currently on my radar. In silent panic I, too, entertain my fate of the unknown, “Are you going to be stuck, here, single forever?”
Before you get out your violins, I admit hating to co-opt such a traumatic event like this and relate it to something like my singlehood. Much like how the word PTSD is used willy-nilly when it was originally just supposed to be exclusive to Vietnam soldiers and the like, I don’t want to cloud the real trauma and despair they faced. I’m just using this story as a loose metaphor for my own.
That being said, I have been in my own “Andes” of singlehood for 99% of my adult life and it’s taken its toll. There have been “airplanes” overhead, so promising, but they just pass by. This is mostly my anology for unavailable men who hit on me, false alarms, false starts — whatever polite synonyms one can think of for these unfortunate situations. On that note, I could write a whole blog on why men need to wear their wedding rings in public, because the whole talking with you for 30 minutes and then finding out about your wife and children is getting really old. When I spot a ring, it’s game over. I don’t even bother to waste my precious flirtatious energy: I see married men as a brick wall. But I digress, in the midst of such red herrings, I’ve kept myself extremely busy and productive to ward off the looming despair. Numa hiking that ridge reflects my current state of utter dissapointment, but he decided to keep on trekking and I must find the fortitude to do the same.
EMBRACING NIHILISM IN ROMANCE TO CONSERVE ENERGY
So, what does this look like? Well, it’s something I’ve been processing for months now so my answer is still evolving. Currently, I am in a just exist state of mind — there is less energy exerted and less risk to your ego going about your singlehood in this mindset of indifference. It numbs life around you, especially when you see that everyone and everything is passing you by (social media is a terrible reminder of this) and your “time is running out.”
Now I know that “just existing” is a form of nihilism, a milqtoast mindset that contends with my strong faith and joy found in God, but it’s a protective mindset (and I’m also trying to not let it pour into other areas of life). I’m no psychologist but I posit a theory after experiencing many bouts of nihilism regarding my lackluster romantic life: people adopt nihilism in the same way the brain goes into a coma or hypothermia because the brain is forming a protective numbing layer around the core of the body as the last resort. Thus, my numbing these particular desires in the romantic realm has been the key to not getting upset about that expectation not coming to fruition. Did you know one of the Andes survivors Nando was in a protective a coma state for almost three days after the horrific crash? He would become one of the 16 survivors in the end.
I don’t think about or pine for men anymore. It’s actually quite liberating. They just don’t intrigue me. I know I can’t sentence a whole population for the handful that have let me down, but this is where I am at — and I know millions of others are in the exact same boat. Retired from dating and waiting on a miracle from God so you don’t get your heart ripped out again? Join the club. I believe you can be thriving in life when you meet someone or “just existing”, because I’ve started to believe that love is mostly brought on by fate. It’s less about merit and more about things we have no control over. That is why I choose to conserve my energy and just exist in that part of my life. It doesn’t mean I’m giving up, it means I’m surrendering all outcomes to God. Because how many couples have you met who pretty much came together without orchestrating it, without pushing or planning it? Scores and scores…
FINDING MY WAY BACK TO THE THRIVE MINDSET
Now, here’s my dilemma: I know life is worth more actually thriving — living life! — than just existing. Just like Numo did on that mountain: he chose to live in the hope of the unknown, not just exist in the hopelessness of the known around him. So, having said that, I miss my thriving mindset and am trying to reach an equilibirum between the thrive and just exist mindset. Thriving takes risk and risk is what really makes you feel alive. And I miss feeling alive.
Like Rose dropping her blue sapphire in the ocean — that was me every time I wore my heart on my sleeve for a man. I let my heart go but he never caught it. So, I would have to hold my breath and dive down into the trenches carved out by my tears to retrieve it. I’ve done this so many times that I am now familiar with that dark but rather stay away from it. I’d rather be alone than keep letting my heart go, so as to preserve my emotional energy and what’s left of my sanity and sacred vulnerability. One has to find their own equilibrium between conserving energy and still choosing to take risks in life. There is a cost benefit to every mindset. It’s how we grow and learn — all that proverbial nomenclature. I realize now that just existing in my singlehood has taken over my whimsom imagination and competitive spirit that I had in my thriving mindset — on a cliff dangling below but so free, so ambitious. That’s really the me I’ll always be inside! So, you can bet I’ll pull a Rose and risk dropping my sapphire heart again — I just hope its for the last time.
Damn these mountains though….I hope we all, eventually, find our way past them. The need to pair bond is intense in most humans and I am no exception — but I’m still not one to just settle with whomever. Sometimes I wish I was that kind of person though, in which the nagging despair of being single would just be displaced by my soul deprived of authentic connection. But, unfortunately, that’s not a bargain I could live with. I want to prevail like Numa, Nando and the rest of them. I want to keep moving against all odds, because someone once told me, “where there is life, there is hope”…
