Cynthia was complaining to me that she had girlfriends who were having “all the fun” in life.
“What kind of fun?” I asked.
“They have boyfriends all the time, and they talk about having sex, going dancing and drinking, stuff like that.”
“It really does sound like fun, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“From time to time it actually is,” I said, “but it’s like stacking blocks.”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever stacked blocks?”
“Sure, as a kid.”
“And it’s fun. The pile gets higher and higher, but eventually what ALWAYS happens?”
“The pile falls over.”
“Yeah, it always does. Same with the kind of ‘fun’ your friends are having. Ever noticed that they rotate through boyfriends?”
“Yeah, they do.”
“So the stack falls over even faster than you think. They have fun, it wears off, they crash, and then they start all over again. But the stack never stays up. It’s a pretty precarious and frantic way to live.”
In the absence of Real Love, Imitation Love can seem pretty great. But it always, always collapses under the effect of its own weight and instability. Why would we ever spend our time in pursuit of anything that always fails in the end?
