Quite The Contrary

They say that anything worth while isn't easy, right? I don't know who they is but I'm assuming it's a large group of people who, since spouting that phrase, have overachieved in some way or another. They are looking back with fondness over their trials and tribulations and the hardships that brought them to a state of satisfaction, right?

Is it possible that this oversimplification of some of life's biggest challenges may just in fact be the elusive explanation for why we allow ourselves to become, at one point or another, the victim of unrequited love? While I am a firm believer that it is extremely difficult to choose who you love and on many occasions I have, in fact, wished for a pill or an elixir to free myself from those feelings for certain individuals who, in hindsight, were undeserving of my affections--I am also a believer that those who engage in an unrequited love have a certain fascination with pain and the perennial question of why they, in fact, merit or perpetuate that mistreatment.

Why, in the movies, do we always root for the boy next door or the best friend who is overlooked? Is it that we pity them or is it that we might suffer from a chronic dissatisfaction and a secret addiction to that dissatisfaction? After all, if you find yourself consistently fighting for something, shouldn't you ask yourself if it's the pursuit or the battle that interests you more than the prize itself?

So why do we love this misery? Why do we repeat these masochistic mistakes when it comes to matters of the heart? Why do we imagine that a love we had to fight for would be any more significant than one that pieced itself together oh so seamlessly? I've heard many theories. Men think women want to believe they were able to change a man, that they were the one exception to the man's natural vices. Women want to know that they were enough.

While I think there's a grain of a validity in each of these gender specific arguments, I think it's really more simple than that. As much as we think, at one point or another, that we want the thrill of the chase, what it really comes down to is this:

We just want to be chosen.*

*Musical inspirations (of late) that brought me to this realization: Brutal Hearts by Bedouin Soundclash, We Can't Be Friends by Lorene Scafaria, Blue by LeeAnn Rimes, I Fall To Pieces by Patsy Cline. Buy them--and buy them now. They won't disappoint if you're feeling quite unrequited.