Love: a rant

Disclosure: These are my views, and I completely understand and respect if you disagree. I don't mean this rant as a judgement on anybody or anything in particular, when I speak about things, I mean it in a general way.  I make some mentions about education and income, as they apply to my life. I am by no means talking down to anybody that comes from different circumstances.

We live in a time of using, not loving. And being afraid rather than pursuing.
I look at the way I love, the way people of my generation love, and appalls me. I wonder when our values, as a society, experienced a shift from actually valuing human interaction, and savoring our experiences with each other as individuals, to simply discarding the people we know like old magazines on recycling day.  We always seem to be looking to upgrade, to see if we can find someone taller, skinnier, stronger and smarter than the last person we were with. While I believe that nature drives us to find a mate with whom we would produce the strongest offspring, this innate drive to find a compatible mate is quite different than the blatant egoism and rampant superficiality that so many of us carry with us today.

Step back and self-evaluate. Are you sure aren't already surrounded by individuals who are worth their weight in gold, and a significant other who puts your happiness first? For what are we striving? Why must we so readily discard such individuals of value from our lives? Many modern men are hardly brag-worthy, most having forgotten simple things like opening doors, bringing flowers, and showing passion with reckless abandon. While many a modern woman is incessantly demanding and afraid to relinquish control, for fear of retreating back into gender roles so suffocatingly reminiscent of the 1950s.

We are a generation disillusioned by circumstances we have manifested for ourselves.  So many deeply bright and successful individuals, near and dear to me, have mentioned that they believe everybody cheats (frequently) in relationships, and that we now live in a time where nobody stays together. Don't you feel that that is for us to choose? Why must we simply accept circumstances based on societal norms that have little basis in what we actually want for ourselves?  The fact of the matter is that even if "everybody" cheats and "nobody" stays together, I think we need to take a hard, honest look at our lives. Using terms like "everybody" and "nobody" implies a general majority of the population, generally assumed to be greater than 50%.  Statistically, only 30.4% of the US population has bachelor's degrees, 7.95% have master's degrees and a mere 3% have doctorate or professional degrees. Most of you reading this entry have been educated at the bachelor's level or above, CLEARLY we are not the statistical majority. Why are we living our lives by the assumed (likely incorrect) values of the majority, when we cannot pretend to be classified as such?  Even if we fall into the statistical majority, can we not choose to have better outcomes for our lives?

I understand that life is everything but straight forward, and that there are an infinite number of factors beyond our control. I am not issuing a call to perfection, I am merely encouraging us to strive for better. To simply try and believe that even if everybody cheats, and no relationships last, that does not have to be the inevitable outcome of our lives. We are not victims of society's existence.

We have to cherish who we have before us, even if their exterior is marked with irregularities.Work to be better. We must love harder and more freely.