Mars’ Love

Posted by admin on Mar 10, 2009 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

Dear Mars’ Lovers,

I’m sad. The woman I love isn’t interested in me and now she’s going out with a jerk! Why does this happen? Is this an internal deficiency in me? (I know I’m not an artist, musician or athlete.) Or is this a symptom of a fundamental injustice in modern society? Help me. Please.

– Despairing in Douglas

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Dear thirteen years too early,

Steady guys never have luck going steady with a lady. Trust me; you’re thirteen years too early. Girls tend to fall for a guy who’s a little rough around the edges. Someone they might not want to show off to Mom, but love to party with.

They like the guys with charisma and talent, the guys who are good at something – such as hockey or guitar – but will eventually end up nowhere in life because they’re just not ‘good enough.’

Now this is when you finally appear on the scene, after a further thirteen years of celibacy. The losers have all gone home, to jail, or are unemployable. But you’re stable; you’re steady. You’re like the tortoise racing the hare, making your way towards the distant finish-line with patience and sincerity.
You will be the man. You will win every lady’s heart. The underdog will rise to triumph over the Spartan lovers of the past. But not any time soon.

So my suggestion to you is this. Pull out your Blackberry and open up that calendar application which rules your steady heart. Now skip ahead thirteen years and mark with great vigour the day on which you will become the man. Relish the fact that victory will be yours in the end! You will win the woman you love when she dumps that lowlife, that jerk, that pestilent critter of the past.

You will triumph, unless, of course, he makes the NHL draft. Then you’re once again hung out to dry, destined to the life of a hermit, dwelling apart from society, rejected.

Callously yours,

Apollo

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Oh Wrongfully Rejected,

Yours is a tale of egregious woe, yet even the raging clouds of existential despair may prove ameliorative to you. Confessedly, the clouds don’t have a silver lining – perish the hope-dashing cliché – but if you embrace and drink deeply of the rain of anguish, affliction, and wretched misery, the seeds of perspective may bloom again within you.

Cynics would say that she wasn’t worth it, that you’re worth more, that she’s crazy, or you were deluded by some chemical high. But, to embrace the resplendent truth as we would an angel of joy, admit that this helps not. We both know better; we both know your love cannot be reduced so: you, deep thinker, went for her, she was worth it, and you failed. Feel that? The deep ache in your soul is a beautiful catharsis, isn’t it?

And so, in the majestic mood of healing, we must face the grand and glorious reality: she saw the real you, more or less, and rejected you for another. So the happy truth is that you’re right about you and you’re also right about society. You’re missing all the wrong things. Yes, there truly is something amiss with the human condition. There truly is something wrong that so many inherently privilege surface to substance, infatuation to love, danger to devotion, disrespect to honour, futility to sacrament, and, in essence, evil to good. You’ve but gently scraped the surface of it.

So look on the bright side! You may not have been affirmed in your goodness or worth, but you are becoming more human, even through brutal and personal rejection, and are privileged by the quest. And never get discouraged: before you sentence your mind to the Elysian Fields through the glories of weakly sentimental poetry, daisy-mutilation, and secret doses of Celine Dion, know that if you can stay vaguely normal there is always hope! Be comforted that when the grandiose chaos of misguided pseudo-love reaches its magnificent zenith and deconstructs itself in the life of your beloved, be it in a year or a decade, odds are that you’ll have been blessed with someone interested in you and may even be able to respectfully gloat.

Truthfully, you just can’t mix reason and active participation in the grand quest of love like you’re doing, or you’ll end up like Dante, Napoleon, Aeneas, Wagner, Marc Antony, or (heavens to goodness) Abelard. Rather, sing love serenades and don’t cram human beings so hard into your analytical categories. In the heavenly fog that this entails, Cupid will most certainly harpoon a really nice one for you.

Infinities of Love,

Aphrodite