Happy almost Valentine’s Day, Duke humans.
According to Mumford and Sons, “where you invest your love, you invest your life.”
I hope you have been wise with your investment.
Where do you invest your love?
From the time I was a young heart, I invested my love in athletics and academics. I took myself on dates to vet camps, piano recitals, athletic tournaments and SAT prep tests. Love became associated with achievement instead of a feeling. Always striving for my idea of perfect, just never seeming to get there.
This pursuit came full circle during one of my more challenging of relationships. I convinced myself that if I became perfect then one of my distant beloved universities would accept me.
Once I was accepted by one of those beloved universities, this heart was still unsatisfied. I was in need of yet another distant goal to fall in love with and achieve. I decided to begin my next all consuming relationship with my career. Internships were on my mind more so than basic human functioning. Well-constructed emails and cover letters became my main source of communication and personal expression. Receiving interviews were like first dates that made me excited yet terrified. After I completed not one but two internships with my dream company, I was back at square one, left with that same longing.
My next goal? A Rom-Com, fairytale. Disney-worthy, ROMANCE escapade. In the worst way possible, I viewed dating as another extra curricular activity. I pursued my potential matches as though it were a sporting event. As an athlete, I was a pro at the game of romance. Unfortunately, it never got past the point of game. We all know the game, right Duke Humans? Well if not, let me let you in on a little thing I like to call the game. Step 1—Figure out you like someone. Step 2—Make them aware of how awesome you are. Step 3—Make them chase you so that you don’t look desperate. Step 4—Make sure that you analyze each and every one of the text messages, interactions or lack thereof. Step 5—Explore the data with all of your 23 best friends so that you can validate the degree of interest. Step 6—Being honest with feelings is not a necessary part of this game, and now that we are being honest, the game has had a zero percent success rate.
When the game didn’t work, since it never did, I fell back on my checklist theory. I would be able to identify my soul-mate by the list. Simply put, he is funny, empathetic, brilliant, athletic, ambitious. He must have the capacity to keep up with my lifestyle and, at the same time, challenge my world-views. He needs to have the ability to break down the walls that surround my heart and share in my love for Mexican food, snowboarding and wakeboarding. Last but certainly not least, New Zealand must be on his bucket list. My success rate? Same as the game.
After many futile attempts, I realized that, unlike a company, school, team or a group, a relationship is not a distant goal to attain. It involves the ability to intimately relate to a person and has nothing to do with checking boxes or winning the game. It involves enjoying another’s company with the occasional added bonus of chemistry and the feels.
Relationships can serve as mirrors to something we did not know was within. They can manifest as some of our greatest lessons. They can provide endless entertainment and even some of our greatest pains. Relationships help connect us to ourselves in the most indirect and often unappreciated of ways. They may come into our paths for a short period or stay for a lifetime. They can appear, then disappear, only to appear again years down the road.
In my 22 years, I have been witness to and have experienced both whole hearts and broken ones. When my father suffered a heart attack and passed away last semester at the age of 59, I was confronted to face that inevitable fact of our shared humanity. I now see the heart as a muscle as well as the guiding force that brings us closer to something greater than ourselves. I decided to flip all of my theories of love on their heads and start from scratch. I have since stopped playing the game, I have ditched the checklist, I get my daily cardio in and I eat my omega-3 fatty acids every day as well.
There is no resume-building to be had here anymore. No longer giving away my heart to one-sided relationships, institutions, ideas, men or groups that I am trying to make love me so that I will love myself by association.
Romance arena? He does not fit all of my soul-mate boxes. No games are played. We are quite different. He is a skier. I am a snowboarder. He is hilarious. He leaves my heart a little less heavy. He is not some distant end goal. I am not trying to perfect myself in order to feel accepted by him. We are on the same page, though he lives in California and I here at Duke.
Until our lives collide again, I am in an all consuming relationship with the life I have tirelessly built here at school. Carefully investing my heart in the people, times, activities and classes that leave it a little less heavy. That is not to say that everything that constitutes my life I must love. That is both impractical and impossible. However, I will say that love is available in the now if you are open to accepting it. I close with this. Use your brain to do what you came here to accomplish. From time to time though, I implore you to throw logic out the window and listen to the beating muscle in your chest.
Happy Almost Valentines Day. Trust the process. Catherine.
Catherine White is a Trinity senior. Her column runs on alternate Thursdays.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.