Lately I've been pondering the frustration caused by the lack of "surface information" available to me in daily life. This is a general thing but I must confess that it probably has a specific root...
Girls.
Being flesh and blood and heterosexual in nature, from time to time I find myself encountering what I perceive as beauty and being drawn inexorably in by it (oh come on... how many times has it happened before and I've blogged on it here).
Most men would just go with the internal girly whirly detector in their head... however, I am not most men. I find that I don't have the luxury of just going with my instincts.
Annoyingly.
You see there are two important things you need to know about me in respect of this. The first thing, is that psychologically and emotionally, I find it a little too easy to fall in love... don't ask me why it is... it just is. The second thing you need to know is that I recognise the need for spiritual responsibility and accountability in my own life both with regard to myself and to others.
If I commit myself to a romantic cause of of action (however innocuous), in the past it generally hasn't taken me too long to get in over my head... and I find myself caught in a tug of war between the giants of romantic love and spiritual well-being.
What happens when an irresistible force hits an unmoveable object?
If I go out with someone who doesn't put similar stock in their ethics and beliefs, one of two things (usually both in tides and seasons, depending on how long things pan out)eventually happens:
- I get emotionally attached and conflicted and tend to get melancholic, miserable and spiritually ineffective.
- The other person can't cope with the importance I put on my faith and it becomes a source of friction and argument.
Having this knowledge makes it a great burden for me to carry. I am naturally more acutely aware of it at this time of year as all my hormones tend to kick into overdrive as we emerge from winter.
In fact there are potentially as many as 4 girls (5 if you include Fliss Walton's appearance in this Halifax advert), who I semi regularly run into who catch my eye in this manner... but for the reasons stated above, I won't do anything about it.
When I get thinking like this, I start to think how easy life could be if we were all like the Terminator. No, I don't mean that I'd like us all to be pathological cyborg killing machines. I'm referring to "Terminator Vision"...
Imagine how much simpler the dating game would be if you could just walk into a bar or town square, scan the individuals there... and be presented with a list of pointers with regard to "surface" compatibility with those people (just pointers mind... nothing should take away from the fun and stimulation that comes from getting to know a person one to one). Oh and before you ask... another essential divergence from the Terminator films - we shouldn't have to walk into those places naked in the first instance lol.
If the word "Christian" popped up on any one of those girls heads while scanning.... I'd lock on and totally go for it... but as it stands I'm somewhat of a reluctant hermit.
In fact, whilst I may be joking... we potentially in the future may have this very ability. Advances in the field of augmented reality are bearing fruit along these lines. Last month I read this article in the Guardian. I was particularly drawn to this segment:
"A prototype application demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February took things a little further again. Point the phone at a person and if it can find their details, it will pull them off the web and attach details – their Twitter username, Facebook page and other facts – and stick them, rather weirdly, into the air around their head (viewed through your phone, of course)."
Naturally whilst this is exactly the kind of technological advancement I need to overcome my ethical romantic problems... I recognise that the issues of privacy and data protection are immensely important and perhaps this needs to be thought through a bit before we start walking down that road.
Until then, I guess I'm stuck trying to work this out by developing telepathic powers.
