The Man Who Knew Too Little

If you have never seen the Bill Murray classic The Man Who Knew Too Little, you are really missing out. I don't think people put it up there with Groundhog Day or What About Bob?, but it is hilarious. I watch it if I am having a bad day, and it always picks me up. Anyway, it's about this bumbling guy that thinks he's in some kind of audience participation theater, but he is really caught up in the conspiracy to restart the Cold War. He thinks it's all just an act, so he goes along with it.

The other night I had a dream like that. Except it was the other way around. It was like Candid Camera, or The Truman Show but it was an adventure story. I thought it was all real, only to find out at the end that it was all an act. The kicker was that there were people that I thought were dead, that weren't really dead. In the dream I had a girlfriend that I thought was now dead, but she walked into the debriefing room and I was floored. In the course of the adventure I'd fallen for another woman, but she had really fallen for me too, so I was confused as to what to think. I'd only moved on because I thought the first woman was dead, except she wasn't dead. But I was happy in the current relationship, how would I reconcile that?

I woke up from the dream and thought, "nice try." It doesn't make me feel much better about my current situation, but it does make me think. What is the human capacity for love? How many can be included? On the one hand I don't believe in there being a, "one and only." But on the other, I believe in monogamous relationships. I think of another film, Dan, in Real Life, with Steve Carrell. Is it a betrayal to remarry after the death of a spouse? I think I would have an extremely hard time in that situation.

There is a certain seeming randomness to attraction. There are certain things that I think I find attractive, but no two women I've been interested in over the years have looked anything alike. Tall and short, blonde, brunette, and auburn, petite and full figured, my interests have run the table. But love is different than mere attraction. It is a decision. It is an action. A stake president once said that there were probably many women he could have been happy with, but he chose to be happy with his wife. And he'd chosen that everyday since they were married.

Dating is so mercenary. When you are dating you are looking for what is best for you, which is completely opposite of what marriage is supposed to be. When you are married, you are no longer number one, you are 1-B, at least to yourself. That should be fine, as you ideally become 1-A for your spouse. (Correct me if I've got that wrong married people, I'm working on my observations as an outside party. I'm sure adding children changes things even more, but that is for another blog.) But when dating you are tasked with making the tricky switch from looking out for yourself to looking out for another, and you just hope they make their own switch at the same time. But if they turn around before making that switch...

As stated below, I've let go of an old girlfriend. Well, sort of. I'm letting her go without a fight, not that I have any say or power to keep her from going. But I'm half hoping she comes back on her own, and am loathe to even think of moving on. That's not really letting go then, is it?