There is a dilemma I have every time I am in the grocery store or the post office or a bar and I see a pretty girl. To pursue or not to pursue, that is the question. Not pursuing, I know, will lead to nothing, but often so will pursuing. This we know. So it’s pretty clear what should be done. You have to be in it to win it, as they say. The problem, I suppose, is that I’m not sure what’s so special about pretty girls, besides the fact that they’re pretty, of course. The problem is that I cannot see their insides. I can see that they are pretty, so I reason that their shortcomings must lie elsewhere. And so I don’t bother contriving an excuse to talk to them.
But now there is a worse problem, a tragic problem, which is this: Some of these pretty girls are incredibly interesting and genuinely nice and down-to-earth and single and would like me in their most sober moments. But I’ll never know which ones these are because I assume, rightly, (justified by the statistics,) that they are either not nice or not interesting or not down-to-earth or not single or wouldn’t like me. Of course, I know that there is a reason pessimists never win the lottery (they never buy tickets because they think they’ll never win) but there is also a reason that not many optimists win the lottery either (it’s the lottery, your chances are one in a bizillion).
But, the invisible little optimist hovering over my right shoulder tells me, there also is a reason that the people who do win are optimists and not pessimists (they bought tickets). So I guess my sin is in not buying a ticket—not approaching a pretty girl that might just make me feel like an instant winner. Why don’t I? A few reasons. One is that I find it annoying when someone treats the pretty girl he just met like royalty while he treats her friend, whom he also just met, like a lamp post. Because beauty blinds, he is more interested in an averagely interesting gorgeous girl than a gorgeously interesting average-looking girl.
Do I blame him? Maybe not. Do I want to be like him? No. Do I want to be with the average-looking girl? Not particularly. Am I too picky? Yes. Am I too much of a dreamer when it comes to love? Undoubtedly. Do I feel the need to change? Emphatically no. I feel the need to stay the same. I just don’t know how I’m going to find her, this completely gorgeous, incredibly interesting, deeply kind, dreamy, dreaming, down-to-earth, moon-loving, optimistic single girl that makes me tremble and feels the same. Is she standing in line in front of me buying my favorite flavor of Doritos? Buying stamps? Putting away her luggage in the overhead bin? Or drinking a beer contentedly talking with her friends (smiling and laughing unaware of but not in her beautiful heart indifferent to my dilemma)? Who knows? The problem is this: You don’t know until they draw the winning numbers and you don’t care until you buy a ticket.