You can't make me cry, Ryan Gosling.

I know I'm not crazy, I've heard of it happening to other guys before. I won't name names, because some might consider this sort of weakness a private matter.

When people dream, it's almost always about someone they know, or at least someone they've seen. But every now and then, I have some dream where the main character is myself and some girl. She's faceless, not in the sense that she doesn't have face, but rather in the sense that I don't remember it as soon as my head rises up from my pillow.

In this dream, you always fall in love and you're perfectly happy. Perfectly happy, that is, until you realize that it, in fact, wasn't reality. You go about your day mentally pining over her. You can only grasp minute details of her being. The way her hair fell on her shoulders. Her freckles, or her eyes. But never the entire picture.

It's a bittersweet feeling. The sweetness coming from knowing that it's possible she's out there. The bitterness coming from the knowledge that it was most likely just a dream, and the only hope of grasping it again is to have the exact same dream - something that seems to only happen in nightmares.

You clock off from work. You go home and eat dinner. Silently if you eat it alone, silently if you don't. You watch the clock tick by and begin to wonder if you'll ever get tired enough to sleep. The analog clock reads 9:22. You lay your head down and you attempt to sleep. You quietly toss and turn and the analog clock reads 1:43.

You crawl out of bed the next morning, feeling lonely. The Folgers doesn't satiate your bloodshot eyes. You clock back into work. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Reading this back to myself makes me feel claustrophobic for some reason. It makes me feel like I'm helplessly trapped in a box. Like it's the worst possible scenario.

However, I have one worse for you.

You know what that is?

When you know exactly who the faceless girl is.

Sitcoms Lie To Us.

I don't smoke, not ever. But sometimes, my friend says to me, "Ben. Are you high? That's something a high person would say." And right now, I have one of those statements for you. Brace yourself.

Think about this -
Every road in America is connected. Once that thought enters your mind, you realize that it's not absurd. Of course they are all connected. It sometimes just blows my mind to think that from Pronghorn Ranch, Prescott Valley, AZ., I can get to any street in our country. I can go from my house to Harrison Avenue, Foxcroft, Maine (credit to Google Maps for this illustration, thanks.).

Sometimes, the bleak realization hits me that sadly, romance is this way too. Everything and everyone is connected. You can't skip steps, or cross the field. You have to stick to the roads to get to your destrination.

No longer is there spontaneity in blossoming relationships. No longer can you introduce yourself, but rather, someone else does the introduction for you. You have to stick to the road. I long for a world similar to any sitcom, where you can be attracted to the girl at the coffee shop, the bookstore, the bakery, or the theater, and have it be socially acceptable.

In this fictional world, it would be alright for you to constantly spend unrealistic amounts of money on mundane things such as over-doses of caffeine, cupcakes, books, movies, etc. In order for an opportunity to talk to her.

Sadly, How I Met Your Mother is wrong. I'm reminiscing about an episode where Marshall, Ted, and Barney try going to a coffee shop where Marshall has been flirting with the barista. Watch the clip.



This doesn't happen! But in all fairness, it should. Baristas - put hearts next to names on the coffee cups. Girls in the bakery - give free cookies. Girls in the bookstore - recommend a book. Girls in the concessions stand at movie theaters - forget to charge me for me refill (arguably, the lamest of my examples so far).

We notice. I notice. It makes it a little bit easier, and inspires some form of confidence to traverse into the world of the unknown, the world of talking to girls that you've never met before. Shed the notion of creepers.

My hope is that this post becomes viral. My hope is that they all become viral, but this one especially. People need to understand that it's alright for a stranger to introduce themselves to you. It's alright. Let's trust the sitcoms.

Hold Em.

When I was in college, I started playing Texas Hold Em' a little bit. I usually won the few times I played, or at least came in second. Sometimes I play here in my hometown and do pretty well.

I'm not outwardly great at it, and I don't really strategize. However, the most simple pieces of advice I can give to any starting player is this:

1. Don't fold on the flop if you posted blind.
2. You won't ever win without a few risks, and pushing the other players

So, let me expand on my previous post about risks, and the super cliche metaphor of going "all-in".

I think sometimes with girls (although, this theory has very rarely proved successful to me), you have to go all in. Even though you only see if what's in your hand (your pocket cards), and what everyone else can see, you have to go all in. You don't know what's in her hand. You don't know how her hand interacts with your hand, and everyone else's hand. But it's that chance that matters. Without the chance, you'll never beat her.

You have to push and push and push. Sometimes, she calls your bluff and you're bleeding chips. You're bleeding, and out of game if you can't come back with a bang.

Sometimes, if you expect to get anywhere, you continue to push and push and push until she folds, right into your arms.

Rain

My favorite book is The Art of Racing in the Rain. Everyone should read it.

My favorite passage from the book is when the narrator, a dog named Enzo, is talking about how his owner, Denny, is the best professional race car driver of his generation because of his ability to drive on the track in rain. Enzo speaks of how Denny drives through the rain without changing to rain tires, as everyone else on the track does.

Denny says that the trick is to drive like there are eggshells on the pedals that you don't want to crack. He says that in the rain, your car can act unpredictable. So instead of running into a sudden change in the status quo, he compensates, and spins his car, so he can control the spin, before the rain does it for him.

Your car goes where your eyes go, that which you manifest is before you.

The quote goes,

"That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves"

Allow me to use this as an analogy not only for cars and life, but rather for our relationships with each other.

I've began to notice, ever since high school when I began actually dating girls, that I walk into the relationship with one of two different perspectives, depending on the girl.

The first is one of extreme and utter confidence. I know what I'm going to say, when I'm going to say it, and I do so with a sense of cockiness, assuming the knowledge of how she will react.

Not to put down the rewards of having confidence, but I've seemed to notice that the relationships I go into with an extreme sense of self-consciousness are always the keepers.

The girls that tie the tongue are the keepers. The girls that build up roadblocks when we are already blindfolded, and missing an arm and a leg. The girls that make us work for it. I'm not suggesting that girls should outwardly play hard to get, but I'm rather suggesting that the girls that naturally make us stumble and fall are the ones that are worth us getting back up again.

Going back to The Art of Racing in the Rain, Denny races through the rain, carefully and with precision. He doesn't assume. And let me propose that we should walk into these relationships in a similar fashion:

Understand the risks, and take them. Understand that the girls that are easy to figure out, aren't the ones worth standing back up for.

Denny only has confidence in one absolute: the finish line is always behind the obstacles.

We should assume the same thing.

The rain provides an unexpected shroud on the obstacles. But the finish line is on the other side of the rain.

So, charge on.

Comfort Zones

"I don't want him to change for me."
"I don't want to change for her."
"I want them to like me for me."

All of these are very silly concepts. I can't imagine that a successful relationship being one in which both don't undergo some sort of change.

Compatibility can only be so concrete, theres always a time to split hairs on certain things. And that is why I've decided one of the most important factors to successful love is adaptation, and leaving your comfort zone.

I can't even being to relate to you how many times in past relationships I was uncomfortably (although, willingly) encouraged into awkward and uncomfortable situations.

Dancing? I hate dancing. But I danced.
Ballet? I hate ballet. But I watched.

Some could say it would purely be to avoid fighting, but why do we avoid fighting? If fighting is such a problem, then end things already. However, perhaps making the other person happy is just masquerading as "avoiding fighting".

Adaptation will always be necessary to accommodate healthy love. Odds of finding someone perfect in every area of their life, or a perfect fit to you isn't only slim to none, but it's probably impossible.

So my challenge?

Watch terrible movies. Listen to grating music, and eat disgusting food. Dance a gaudy dance, and spend your money on things that don't really matter.

Why?

Because everything else matters.