Bring Me a Higher Love

“Love me, love my dog”... from an old proverb that if you love someone, you must accept everything about them, even their faults and weaknesses.

There, delivered into my online cupid.com dating prospectives with great exclamation, fanfare, and a whopping 5 stars out of the maximum 5 for compatibility was my ex-boyfriend. I wondered what the probability was that the robotic matchmaker hooked me up with my recently former Mr. Wonderful when millions of men all over the world who registered on the match website might fit into the required parameters stated in my profile. The odds were staggering. Either there was a serious glitch in the matchmaking determination program or the web-bound love fairies were up to their mischievous tricks again. Either way, the intrigue was too much and my curiosity clicked into his profile.

Grinning in a brightly flamboyant suit jacket – hand painted 20 years ago by his first wife – my old bolo tie hung from his neck and the caption “Jumping in” next to his hopeful mug shot. And in jumping in… to the tar pit of limitless web love possibilities, he had keenly answered each of the formulaic and predictable profile questions... “What will I find in your bedroom?” “What are five things you can't live without?” “If you could be anywhere, where would you be right now?” “___ is sexy, ___ is sexier...” There he was... baiting the waters like an eager fisherman.

As online introductions go, this is the normal procedure for weeding through the hordes of the less compatible – cheeky, inane predetermined questions you meticulously, with heartfelt sincerity, answer while trying to sound intelligent and attract the most well suited mate.

Of course, the double irony of the pensively answered questionnaire is that everyone's first consideration in the primary picking of romantic potentials is the photo anyway... sorry, but you can be as verbally charming or intellectually vibrant as you can muster, however, no one will click on an unattractive photo. This is America the beautiful, remember? The second inconsistency is that everyone applying to the online soul mate search concept wants to be unique beyond definition – “I'm special, different, not the norm, like no one you've ever met.” In reality, the natural animalistic selection process hasn't evolved far from the Neanderthal scratch-and-sniff stage. Scratch the surface with a few clever comments and sniff around... broadband hunting. The new 21st century fern bar is an online pick up scene equivalent to cruising in the 70s and 80s.

“But why would we want to limit ourselves by defining our relationship?" If you ever hear this and think you're in a mutually serious domestic partnership ... RUN. So, there was my 5-star mega-match – the man who consistently balked at the idea of introducing me as his girlfriend for fear of being defined – online and filling in the little blanks written by some fashion magazine psychologist that identify boundaries of personality intimacies. It was too rich.

It is as laughable as it is awkward when the criteria insists you're perfect for each other... were we actually karmically meant for each other or is the universe just a cosmic comic with a fabulous sense of humor? Like the Pina Colada song popular in the 70s where the duplicitous couple meets after anonymously writing to each other from a singles ad, not realizing they were already in love and living together, I wondered if maybe we were possibly meant for each other after all... maybe the robotic matchmaker was right.

"None of this is real, so don’t take it so seriously," he philosophized about the physical world... the excuse to dismiss the entire universe, perhaps for his own absolution, was received with amused certainty – I knew there had to be a higher love, depth that went beyond fear of interpretation. After all, even dark matter, that blackness of supposed emptiness occupying the space between matter in the cosmos, has definition… even “nothing” in its defiance to be “anything”, is therefore defined.

Recently, during an interview with an animal channeler for an article, the psychic asked if I had once had a black and white dog with a “j” in the name.
“Well, yes... but Benjamin passed away in 1986.”
“Yes, and he wants to know why you don't want another dog,” she queried for my long departed fuzzed-faced friend. “He knows you have to travel and is willing to come back as a small breed so he can go anywhere with you.” After trying to justify my independence to a dead dog whose love and unconditional devotion refused to leave me unprotected in the world, I finally gave in to the thought... here was a proud Border Collie, waiting and ready to come back even as a yappy lap dog just to be with me... is there a higher love than that?

As my old friend Lonesome Bob says, “Try to be the person your dog thinks you are...” Happy Valentine's Day... may you find a higher love that truly transcends definition... and a box a fine chocolates.