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What It Means to Fall in Love a Dozen Times a Day

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Sometimes, I like to tell my friends that I fall in love at least a dozen times a day. I tend to get a lot of weird looks and people yelling at me when I say things like that. I obviously don’t mean that I daily go through the complicated process that might end in marriage or that I think the real falling in love thing requires no social interaction.

What I mean by it, then, is that I develop crushes like nobody’s business. Are you an artist? Then I probably have a crush on you. Are you a musician? Then I probably have a crush on you. Can you speak intelligently and convincingly about something? Then I probably have a crush on you. Are you driven? Then I probably have a crush on you. Are you passionate about something? Then I probably have a crush on you. Do you consistently love people in really big, awesome ways? Well, you get the idea…

Believe me, I understand how silly all of this is.

But, a crush is simply defined as an “usually temporary infatuation.” And this is what my crushes signify. It’s not that I believe I could spend the rest of my life with almost every woman I meet or even that I believe I could successfully navigate a relationship with them, it’s that there are things about almost every woman my age that I find temporarily infatuating.

And then I got to thinking. Right now, these “crushes” are really unproductive. I recognize them as “crushes.” Society tells me that crushes are important. I don’t want relationships with all crushes. I avoid until crush is over. Silly.

I figured out a way to make crushes really productive though: I recognize them as things about people that I really admire and like. I tell the person in question about her quality that I really admire and like and why I admire and like it. I spread good cheer. Awesome.

See, I do that last strategy with my male friends all the time, or I like to think that I do. I tell them that I love them and when they do something awesome, I tell them. But I’m all jittery about doing it with my female friends, mostly because I think when I recognize something cool in them, it means I’m crushing. It’s probably time to graduate junior high.

What types of things make you “crush”?

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What You and Augustine Have in Common

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I think about a lot of things when I think about the word “indoctrination,” but I don’t really ever think of myself as an indoctrinator. I am in the pursuit of truth! Of reason! Of other opposites of indoctrination! I do not indoctrinate. Indoctrination is left for people who don’t agree with me.

There’s this really cool psychologist – Albert Ellis. He was a bit eccentric, but he has perhaps the most humanistic and realistic of the personality theories. Ellis believed that we weren’t a passive victim of the things that happen to us. He thought that we indoctrinate ourselves – that we latch on to ideas and then present those ideas to ourselves as fact when, in reality, these “facts” are nothing more than irrational beliefs.

For example, when we say things like “I’m stupid” to ourselves, we are practicing indoctrination. It’s not factually true that we are stupid; it’s a belief. And we can change beliefs. But we rarely do because this kind of self-talk is indoctrinated.

Ellis believed that unwanted emotions were simply irrational beliefs. Who decides that you are unhappy? There is no objective unhappiness machine that calculates good and bad events in your life and pops out an unhappiness quotient. We decide that we are unhappy so much so that when someone asks us how we are doing, we think we are lying if we don’t tell the questioner that we are, in fact, unhappy. But you can’t lie about something that isn’t true, and unhappiness is never a truth.

Ellis also believed that we are slaves to false “musts.” There really aren’t that many “musts” in the world. But we think there are billions. We must be successful. Everyone must play fair and nice or else must be punished. The world must give us what we want when we want. These are all false false false.

So stop thinking about what you think you must do or must happen and start thinking about what you want to do. And indoctrinate yourself with those thoughts.

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The Real Question About Naming and Identity

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A long long time ago, my main source of social interaction online was AOL Instant Messenger. IM was a big deal. It was where all the cool kids were. I remember eighth graders talking about it on the school bus and me thinking, “Dude, I really need to be a part of that.” The best part about IM, like most online interactions back in the day, was that you got to choose your name. You didn’t have to be boring old Spencer. You could be anything you wanted! The purest form of self-expression was now open – choosing your identity.

Choosing your screen name was a bit like getting to choose your own nickname. For people who talked to strangers in chat rooms in those early days, your screen name could be a way of making other people like you – if it was edgy enough, smart enough, witty enough, or cool enough, people might like you better. At least that’s what we though.

It’s really interesting to go back and think about what we thought was important back then. My screen name was golfhawk09. ’09 was my high school graduation date. Golf was my big extracurricular activity and place where I could express myself. And hawk was a way of remembering my recently deceased grandfathers. Obviously, I would never choose golfhawk09 as a screen name today. But it still says important things about my identity even now.

I am always concerned with the next chapter of my life. In junior high, that meant high school graduation. I like to believe I am dedicated to the things I do, so much so that they are synonymous with me. And I like to believe that I am aware about other people.

The thing about names and identities is that when you choose one, you are choosing a story. You are saying to the world, “This is how I want to be seen. This is the story I want to occupy.”

The other thing about names and identities is that when you choose one for someone else, you are choosing how you hear his or her story. That’s why labeling someone by his or her race, gender, sexuality, politics, or church/theology is bad. You are limiting that person’s whole existence to one label. It’s as if all of the Conservatives in the world chose to have their screen names be Conservative1, Conservative2, and so on. That’s not true. Let everyone choose his or her own screen name.

How do you name yourself? How do you identify others?