Seek and Find

Reflections on our title, part two

It’s not so much that I set out looking for an emergency contact. It’s just that, as a single person, you’re kind of always ambiently searching. You never even question this; of course your single status is mutable.

• Singleness is the state of seeking, the state of impermanence: Don’t worry, things will change! 

• Partnership is the state of found, the state of permanence: Good news, nothing ever has to change again!

Anyway, I won’t pretend I ever made a very concerted effort towards cultivating my love life in my twenties, but I did take nearly all the corrective advice I was offered in order to repair my mutable condition. Didn’t I want a permanent state? To be found? 

And there was advice in spades:

“Join a sports league! Go to the gym!” 

I did them one better. I joined ALL the gyms. I was an early adopter of a subscription service which, at the time, allowed nearly unfettered access to fitness classes across the city. I joined impossibly toned stay-at-home moms in barre class in midtown east, dangled from the rafters with tattooed aerial artists in Soho, sweated through high intensity intervals with Wall Street desk jockeys, and slowly discovered that I loathe nearly every form of personal fitness invented by mankind.

In a literal sense, every bit of mundane paperwork confronted me with the conditions of singleness, the presumptions of solitude. With each new gym came the ubiquitous waiver form, absolving everyone of my death or dismemberment at the hands of that surfboard or trampoline or Beyoncé dance fitness routine. Each time, I’d pause for a split second over the contact section. If I were to go pitching off the seat of my SoulCycle in a dehydrated fugue state, did I really expect (or want) them to call…my dad? But wouldn’t it be presumptuous to make my roommate responsible for collecting my desiccated corpse?

“Go to bars alone!”

This actually turns out to be an excellent hobby, which has provided me uncountable hours of entertainment. The secret is that you receive the best possible service when sitting alone at the bar. A sommelier friend once told me that she recognizes a solitary patron as someone there for the pure enjoyment of the experience -not for any social or secondary purpose- and as such, she takes extra pleasure in making the food, drink, and ambience the very best it can be.

I don't care how many lovers or best friends I acquire in life. Going to a bar alone and not speaking to anyone is a forever-delight. 

“Be approachable! Approach others!”

In 2017 I went to therapy, primarily to address my social anxiety. This may come as a surprise to any casual acquaintance who’s ever found themself cornered at a house party and subjected to one of my impassioned, beer-splashing polemics about something both mundane and esoteric. (To that person from the Williamsburg birthday party in 2015 who now knows a semester’s worth about tempered tuning systems, I’m sorry. You didn’t ask for that). 

By the time I got a therapist, my time in New York was closing in on a decade; I had cemented many of the most meaningful relationships of my life. But it was enough of a problem -especially when it came to dating- to require expert guidance.

My CBT therapy involved a number of moderately humiliating exercises such as privately acting out a mock trial of my core beliefs, playing prosecutor, defense, and jury. I am a terrible actor under the best of circumstances and this one-woman show was….not my best work.

I was given a list of social mishap exposures to enact upon unsuspecting members of the public. Ask a stranger if they can help you tie your shoe! Go through your morning with your fly conspicuously unzipped! Press all the buttons in your office elevator! Go into a fancy coffee shop and ask if you can have a croissant for free! In one instance, I walked to nearby Bryant Park, trailed by my therapist, and asked strangers “Do you know how to get to Bryant Park?” (I should also mention that as a result of the summer movie-screening season, this was conducted in the shadow of a 33 foot pop-up projection screen that read “WELCOME TO BRYANT PARK”)

Part of my terror of first dates was (and is) the crossed wires of excitement and worry that CBT can help re-solder. But part of it was also a fundamental fear that I didn’t want the thing I believed I was supposed to want from this other person. I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe how the trajectory towards a single name for that gym waiver felt like a catastrophic narrowing of my world, instead of the expansive growth that love was supposed to provide. It was a failure of my worldview; one that I couldn't yet fully reconcile.

“Do Activities! Join groups!”

Look: it simply does not matter what the activity is – woodworking, archery, book-binding, tree-identification, kayaking, songwriting. The makeup of the group is guaranteed to be 100% straight women who do not want to date you, and do not want to date each other. No one will meet anyone they can date. 

On the bright side, I have a dozen Shibori dyed silk handkerchiefs, can strum out at least five chords on a ukulele, have a reasonable facility with basic postproduction on several Digital Audio Workstations, and can unfailingly pick out a pin oak, black locust or London planetree from a block away. 

“Stop trying so hard! Love happens when you least expect it!”

This, above all, is the advice that turned out to be the most true. It also comes in ways you might not always expect. Looking back on my origin points with many of my closest friends, it’s confounding to track the trajectories of our unlikely flight paths. For instance:

I could never have expected that when my music teacher strongarmed me into group singing lessons in 2008 -with an initially-prickly woman who wanted as little to be in a group class with me as I with her- that Priya would be planning my valaikappu last year, brushing off my concerns about her efforts and expense by saying that this was simply what a sister does.

I could never have expected that escaping a windowless office for a single gossipy happy hour in the heart of Times Square with a coworker I knew nothing about (other than the fact he wore good cologne) would lead to ten years and counting of the most illuminating artistic and philosophical conversations of my life with Jason.

I could never have expected that frantically entreating my nearest neighbor -and a rather new acquaintance- to help me trap a mouse in my kitchen in Harlem in 2011 would lead to Jen being an integral part of family dinners and family vacations in perpetuity. 

I could never have expected that my friend Andrew, despite everything we had already done and made together, would become the person I designated on my advance directives and power of attorney paperwork before I entered the hospital to give birth to our son last May.

As it happens, the states of mutability and of permanence, the states of seeking and being found, were never conditional upon whether I was single or romantically partnered. In fact, they’re not even distinct states of being. They are merely shades of walking through life with an openness to all the miraculous ways that we can relate to one another. 

I am glad you have joined us on onboard this weekly project, which will surely have its own unexpected trajectories, as we share our soundtracks, our podcasting, our scripts, and our process with you. Thanks for being here.

Oh, and to each of my well meaning advice-givers, some of whom may be reading this now: I think we can all agree that your counsel was probably flawed as far as dating advice, but your care led me exactly where I needed to go. Thanks, bud.

-Amrita.

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Andrew’s Note:

Speaking of projects, we’ve decided to re-arrange our basement. In next week’s installment, Amrita and I discuss, debate, and decide how to balance practical needs with theatrical desires, crafting an inspiring space for three.

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