Sometimes, I wonder!

The daily flow of life can feel like running on a treadmill, covering miles and arriving nowhere. Taking a few days off work recently let me step back from the so called benevolent chaos of the world, and I realised that sometimes holding still for a moment actually moves you forward a little. You get to spend time with yourself, the best company you will ever have.

They say, rightly, that sometimes you need to put some distance between yourself and your life to see it clearly.

Look at this quiet in my room, the cool breeze slipping through the open window panes as if someone has dipped the air in water and is splashing it gently on my face. No rush of thoughts, no worry about a salary hike, no tussle over finding someone, no race of heartbeats. A mind at ease, a mild sense of calm. Ah.

Liar!

Did I really just hear the word liar? I didn't need to look around, I knew exactly whose voice that was. How much can you actually fool yourself, anyway? There's a worry about clearing my debts, a quiet inner tussle over this thing called companionship, and yes, my mind is racing too. If any of my colleagues read this, they'd probably notice I left out my worry about a promotion. Well, I'm the kind who likes to chase excellence, not money. Don't laugh, these little phrases help soothe the sting.

The truth is, as it always turns out, I'm in the wrong job. Had my job actually been searching for a soul mate, my boss would surely have noticed the effort. Forget noticing, there might have even been some acknowledgement, some reward, perhaps. Alas. Trying to find a partner online is a task bigger than any process re-engineering I've run through Six Sigma, bigger than project managing a time bound regulatory change or a data quality audit. Trust me on this.

It's a bit like selling an insurance product through digital marketing. Wondering how?

You put up a banner with your best photographs, brag about yourself in a long introductory write up, some truth and a fair bit of exaggeration. You pay the extra fee to make sure your profile shows up first, highlighted, in every search. You wait for someone to get caught in the flashy net you've cast. That doesn't happen. So you go back to basics. Cold calling, generating leads, lining up conversations. You talk with all the passion you can find to convince someone what great partner material you are. And you fail. Don't be disappointed though, today's consumers are choosy. They want the best, and they want to touch and feel a few products before settling on one. You keep at it, the cold calling, the lead generation. That's what they taught you in every selling skills class, didn't they.

History has a funny way of repeating itself. Sometimes I wonder if this isn't just a modern swayambar, a digital version of the old custom where a woman chose her partner from a hall full of suitors. The only difference is that it now happens on a screen. And the numbers on most dating apps are so skewed, more men than women, by a wide margin. I used to resent it. Watch any bar on a Friday night, a woman walks in and, within minutes, a few people are trying to strike up a conversation. She picks one, and off they go. Why would she need an app at all.

What happens the other way round hardly needs writing down. A guy walks into a bar, has a round, then another, then another, and goes home alone.

Talking about rounds, this happens to be my first, for what it's worth. Trying to get to the second one, that's what does the trick, isn't it? Or maybe the third.

You always miss the first peg without noticing, the second one is what pulls you in. It's the third that brings the sparks. Unknown to many, hidden by most, kept safe by the heart, secretly.

If I swap the word peg for love, I don't think much changes. The first one you never forget. The second hits you hard enough that you assume the feeling will last forever. And somewhere around there you realise you need a third one just to feel the buzz of being alive again.

I am only a peg down, so I watch the ones who are two pegs down and try to learn if they are happy. No matter how much fun they make of lost romance, faded sparks and all the other sparkling words I'll leave the reader to imagine, I still believe they have a reason to rush home every evening, to hear real noise instead of silence, to argue over the remote, to get worked up over in-laws and everything else that comes with it. Even the night long snoring beside them is proof that someone is there, looking out for things.

Remember, you have to renew the insurance you've bought, year after year. Lol.

Companionship is a good thing, much like the second peg. The third one brings the hangover. Stir the second peg for as long as you can, and sip it slowly till dawn. It leaves a good taste in your mouth when you wake up.

All of us have a quote, a song, a book we swear by. I have one too.

Why do we really look for someone to spend our life with? I think it's because we need a witness. Someone to notice that we existed, that we tried, that we mattered, even on the days nobody else was watching. There are a few billion people on this planet, and on most days that makes any one life feel impossibly small. But when you let one person in all the way, the good days, the bad ones, the boring Tuesdays, all of it, suddenly counts for something. That, to me, is the whole point.

While everyone who's found their person continues to enjoy the bliss, I'm still here, searching for my second peg.