It’s funny sometimes how the most innocuous thing sets your mind to wondering. For years I have kidded myself about not having goals, only to find that I really do have them, they are just buried beneath a debris field of fanciful stories I tell others so that I seem alternately mysterious and stupid, often at the same time.
Such is the case recently. I was watching the last season of How I Met Your Mother. If you haven’t seen it, it’s like Friends, but a lot of the action takes place in a bar instead of a coffee shop.
My favorite character is Ted Mosby, the guy who is the subject of the whole show, as it is told through his eyes to his children, about how he met their mother.
In one recent episode, the main lady’s man, played brilliantly by Neil Patrick Harris, happens upon “the mother” in a pharmacy and tries to pick her up.
In this scene came a rare moment in sitcom history, a simple truth, delivered by the future Mrs. Mosby in just 11 words.
“Do you want to play or do you want to win?”
These words hit me right between the eyes and burrowed into my cortex. As I’ve often said, I really do want my Happily Ever After. And while I thought it would be grand to play the singles game, date others with no entanglements and enjoy the so-called freedom of not having a significant other, I discovered that it’s not really me.
I mean, how is one to have a Happily Ever After if they are not willing to risk a deep dive into a relationship with just one person.
The simple fact of the matter is, you can’t win if you just want to play.
Don’t get me wrong. I was really sold on this other concept – the idea of playing it loose for a while.
After a lot of soul searching, I discovered that I still really want my Happily Ever After. It’s not an act of desperation, as some would think. Rather, it’s something that is part of me, deeply part of me, that I want to share my life with someone who is absolutely amazing, someone who is the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see before I close my eyes to go to sleep
And playing the game isn’t the same as winning the game.
I don’t think my DNA has the “lone wolf gene” in it. I’m not here to cast stones at those who do, or at least feel as if they want to be alone in their lives. Whatever floats your boat. This is not a judgement. I enjoy my solitude these days, but there’s a big difference between solitude and solitary, and I’m just not built to live the rest of my days alone.
I still want my Happily Ever After. I’m just shy of being through two-thirds of my life. If I live to be 80 I have another 25 years on this planet, if I make it to 85, 30 years.
That’s a really, really long time to be alone in this world. Yes, there is a lot of risk in wanting to win – to achieve your Happily Ever After. Relationships can really suck the big one sometimes. They can cause a lot of hurt and there are times when you just want to say “screw it, I’m good with being alone.”
I have absolutely no doubt that I will get my Happily Ever After. Of course, there’s no real guarantee and there is a huge amount of risk, I could get totally burned again. But but even so, I still want to win and dammit, I am going to.
It’s funny, but at this stage of life, all your priorities begin to change. You’re through raising children, or almost through, and you start to wonder what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. Is everything really cast in stone or do you have the energy, the chutzpah, to give it another go? What are you really going to do with that last third of your life? Are you just going to go through the motions, repeating the mistakes of the past, or are you going to change things up and try one more time for something that may have eluded you up until now that Happily Ever After?
I know that I am going to get bitch slapped in the future. Not by my Happily Ever After but by those who took me at my word that I would be free and easy for a while, playing the game, but not playing to win.
Slap away. I’m just not built that way. Sure, if the right one didn’t come along, I would be happy to still be in the game, taking my at bats, living down my famed strikeouts and hoping to get a home run on occasion in a game of singles.
But life is funny sometimes. It throws you a curve ball when you least expect it. If you’re just playing, you may be good with just taking a random swing at it. No big deal if you strike out. But if you want to win, you’re going to keep an eye on that ball and give it your best shot, even though you had no idea at the time that it was the game winner.
The truth is, life is pretty freaking short and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be happy in it, whether it’s that dream job you’ve always wanted or that love you had almost given up on. Don’t be satisfied with just playing the game, play it to win. I won’t rest until I do.
In the Emerald City, looking for that championship ring, 🙂
– Robb