Your 30s Are For...

...realizing that while you possess the intellectual capacity to contemplate the deeper puzzles of life and pursue them to their artistic, philosophical or academic conclusion (on or off social media), you actively choose not to, instead devoting much of your free time to constructing penis & fart jokes.
Until you are confronted with a situation that demands you summon your highest self and act from a place of reason, nuance, kindness and empathy. In which case, you influence outcomes as positively as you can (from voting mindfully in an election, to helping an old person cross the road or being kind to a telemarketer) so that you can go back - as soon as possible - to your raison d'être i.e. constructing penis & fart jokes.

https://edwardsheridan.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/raison-detre/

Little Heartbreaks

Sick and tired of my one big heartbreak, I joined Tinder because who wouldn’t want to curate the Book of Tiny Humiliations & Disappointments? Technology is so helpful.

I signed up with a bad attitude, cynicism seeping from every pore and found a couple of adequate fellows to chat with.

Them: Hi

Me: Hello.

Them: Wassup?

Me: Nothing much. You say.

Them: Happy Diwali.

Me: Same to you.

Indian men possess charming dating skills. As do I.

There was this one chap though, going by a generic and not-hard-to-find-in-a-haystack-at-all name, with a single photo in which you could just about figure out half his face. He had a sense of humour, we seemed to be getting somewhere, when whoosh, for no reason I understand, he ‘unmatched’ me.

It’s hard not to take it personally when you are rejected not just by a human but also by his mobile app.

Now I’m left with the ‘Hi-Wassup-Happy Diwali’ gang and it’s back to square one.

Yet (as Amit if-that's-even-his-real-name said before we were consciously uncoupled) there is always something to learn from setbacks.
My conduct on Tinder has shone a light on how I am in real life.

I aim low, am consistently apologetic and insecure in my interactions with men, all the while imagining that I’m vastly superior. And then, when they behave like subpar humans, I am distraught and tragedy-struck.

But this is Tinder, see? It doesn’t matter. It’s about swiping left or right. I should be braver, aim higher. I should fake (high self esteem) it, till I make (high self esteem) it. I should catfish my personality – instead of a people-pleasing, short-selling apologetic wimp, I should be the straight-talking, deludedly confident, penis-shriveling diva-bitch of my dreams[1].

I should go after the good lookers, the guys whose profile pics have them paragliding in Guam with a champagne flute in one hand, the IIM-As, the Punjabi-chiknas[2].

No. Wait.

The White Man.
I should seek out the White Man.  

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[1] I realize I don’t even know what my ‘type’ is. Physically speaking. I’m so consumed with feeling bad about my own schlubbiness that I choose the schlubs by default.

[2] Call me racist but most Indian men look like such douchebags in their profile pics. Hardly an open or warm smile amongst the lot of them. And everyone poses with cars that are not theirs, bikes that are not theirs, horses that are not theirs (but wives and children that are theirs? That seems to be the way our chaps wish to attract the opposite sex.)