More to this life perhaps

When two or more females congregate together, invariably the topic of conversations turns to relationships and the subject of love. This has been my experience time and again with all my female friends. In fact I cannot really think of even one female friend with whom I have never discussed this topic. People talk of male bonding over beer and football, but for women, there is ever only one thing that truly glues: the subject of men.

Which brings to me to my second point and lately, a point of ire. Is it possible that we women focus too much on members of the opposite sex? What finally is the endless intrigue and fascination, what is all the to-do about these creatures? Men are just men, boys are just boys and truly, in and of themselves, they are not all THAT inexhaustibly interesting. I suppose I can chalk it up to the age old evolutionary drive in all women to establish a healthy and robust nest for her future egglings. Therefore, with so much at stake, it is endless exciting to discuss the ways to figure out what relationships are all about and what makes for successful, good, lasting relationships. As for dysfunctional relationships, well, one can’t possibly understand what is good about a “good” relationship until one thoroughly analyzes the myriad ways in which a relationship can flounder and dramatically sink to the bottom.

Really, women approach the topic of relationships with the microscopic zeal of the craziest, maddest and baddest scientists out there. They scrutinize every angle, they comb for underlying meanings, they sniff for the unsaid implications, and they concoct fantastical theses on what a man really means when he says X, because of course, he can’t possibly only mean X.

I don’t know if I can offer any true insights on the topic of relationships but I think one very cliched phrase bears repeating here. “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Lord knows life is stressful enough as it is as we juggle our career aspirations, being good friends to our group of hyperstressed female friends, fulfilling our various obligations as good daughter, good sister, good girlfriend, we really need to at some point learn to let the little things go. In other words, don’t be anal and resist the urge to psychoanalyze every thing your guy does. At least psycho-analyze something else that might be more interesting – like what is God thinking today? Yeah, the big Kahuna up there deserves some more scrutinization than I confess to giving to Him recently. But I do believe that.

I think I will make it a personal point to NOT talk about relationships every time with my various friends. Maybe we will talk about famine in Africa, the gross neglect of the Japanese government to make sufficient reparations and expression of regret over its atrocities, the latest movies, the unique style of Jack Keroauc, etc etc. With so many things under the sun, we are doing ourselves a disservice by being overly myopic about our focus.

Here’s a list of things I would like to do before I head off to boot camp in the Fall.

1. Finish editing my video of Grandpa
2. Donate like 25% of my clothes, or sell on ebay, I won’t mind the extra cash
3. Donate 50% of my books to the public library – decluttering is on my mind recently
4. Find good housing in Philly
5. Plan an awesome vacation for July
6. Read every single book I have recently checked out from the library – 10
7. Help rehaul my house’s sad little lawn, currently overrun by evil little weeds
8. Re-memorize all the countries of the world, I’ll do this every year til I’m 80
9. Mmm…more to come when I think of them