What men want!

I met a childhood friend recently after several years. After we had exchanged the customary slaps to the back, he informed me that he was in love, eyes all shining and grin threatening to split his face in half. It was obvious to me that he was very happy. Later on he told me that he was absolutely head-over-heels in love with this girl and could not contemplate a life without her presence. I smiled back brightly at him, at least as brightly as I could pretend. To make my performance more convincing, I even nodded my head understandingly at him. All the time I was thinking, "What a sucker!! Ha ! Ha!".

Later on, at night, when you have time to think clearly and all your self-doubts can finally make themselves heard, I recalled the scene with my friend. I recalled his bright smile and the pure joy in his eyes and my own smug response. And i said to myself "What am I so smug about? What makes me think that I am right and my friend wrong? Wasn't it only a few months ago, that I myself was harbouring similar feelings for someone? Why do I feel so differently now? Only because I am alone? Only because there is no one who loves me as does the girl who loves my friend? Maybe my response was typical of a person regarding something he himself cannot have, a classic case of sour grapes.

Or maybe my attitude is precisely the reason why I cannot have someone who loves me. I have found love in the past, but ultimately I seem to be able to repel them all. I have always told myself that I had acted as someone who knew what he wanted would; that it was someone fundamental deficiency in the girls which had caused them to be repelled by my uncompromising attitude.

But in the recent past, I have had second thoughts. I have started to question the bases of my beliefs. And on close and objective scrutiny, these bases do not appear to be so sound after all. I had convinced myself. first of all, that my beliefs were a result of conclusions arrived at after a chain of perfectly logical reasoning. But the fact remains that human emotions spring from the human brain, which is still largely uncharted territory. The logic, which I had assumed faultless, was based on my understanding of human behaviour. But if the brightest scientists on earth have come nowhere close to understanding human behaviour, what chance do I have? Over the past few days, I have become more and more comvinced that there is a lot of wisdom in abandoning logic and allowing unexplained animal instincts to guide us. Probably, that is the path towards true satisfaction. And maybe its my friend who should be smug, and not me.