iPonder♥

"We are growing jaded, cynical, tired, and world-weary before our time. We are expecting less and demanding less, and those lower expectations are making us unfulfilled and taking us farther from each other." 

--Hill Harper, The Conversation. 

x0x0♥

Game Over! ♥

This past year, my most highly anticipated reads were The Conversation by Hill Harper, and Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey. So I went out and bought them (usually I go to the library, but if I feel something is worth keeping I'll buy) and I read them. I loved them both. I've mentioned The Conversation in a prior post, back before people actually cared about my blog in October. It's a really good post, if I do say so myself. Check it out when you're done reading this one. {Yes, I frequently toot my own horn. On a healthy level, though} 
Anywho...
As I read both books, I thought about certain people, situations, or even memories of my own past and present that illustrated the points both men were making.
Why do we play games when it comes to the opposite sex? Men think women are the ones playing games, women think the men are playing them, so we respond by what? Playing along with them! I've always wondered, what is this unwritten set of rules that we tend to abide by? Who "un-wrote" them? I'd much rather find things out through trial and error than to abide by some rules that make me put my emotions in some box and toss them to the side. Then I read chapter 15 of The Conversation. My mouth dropped when I saw mention of the book The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. Seriously? That's some mess I'd neither buy nor check out from a library. When did men and women become so disconnected to the point where we feel we need manuals to get to know each other?? To me, all this says is that women are mindless, uncreative creatures who need step-by-step instructions to socialize, and that men are mindless creatures as well, who will swarm to us when they see us correctly playing a role that's supposed to represent the perfect woman. The Rules apparently mentions things such as turning down a date if it isn't made offered at least 4 days in advance, and smiling a lot during the date, but not talking a lot about yourself. First of all, what the heck else are you supposed to talk about while getting to know one another?? Duh! As far as the 4-day thing...SMH. Apparently we should be mindless, uncreative creatures who sit and look pretty while lacking spontaneity, as well... I know idiots people who still swear by the rules from the movie Two Can Play That Game! I feel like if you aren't able to do something as simple as thinking for yourself or making conversation, maybe you shouldn't be dating, bringing someone else into your hot mess of a life lol! Seeing as how we all possess...I dunno...BRAINS and whatnot, every little rule isn't going to apply to every person you meet and/or decide to date. Why place someone in a box instead of giving yourselves the space to honestly get to know one another? If you're playing a role, chances are they can tell and will probably play a role to keep up, or dismiss you altogether because, let's face it, a pretty smile is only going to get you so far. Show your personality, and let them decide if they'd like to pursue something with you! I'm sure it probably sucks monkey balls to meet someone and get bamboozled into believing their everything you've ever wanted, only to marry them and find out down the road that they were "just playin'"...
xoxo♥
PS: In honor of this post, here's one of my all-time favorite Maxwell joints. Enjoy!

Where is The Love? ♥

So, being that I'm from Ohio, I guess I'm supposed to be celebrating this *cough*fake holiday known as Sweetest Day today... LoL. Yes, we do that in Ohio. We make up holidays. Moving on...We live in a society where marriages are becoming few, lasting marriages are even fewer, and divorce is ever-looming. For many, divorce is one of the many reasons we won't even get married. Gone are the days when people got married to their high school sweethearts and lived happily ever after (or did those days ever exist at all?)... Now, we're living in the generation of 20-year long engagements, waiting for proposals, shacking up (as the old folks call it), and for many, just being single parents. There's an alarming number of broken homes in the Black community, and the subject is a tough one to tackle in discussion...This is the reason I love Hill Harper's book "The Conversation". I usually go to the library for my just-for-fun reading, but I had to cop this one.

For those of you who aren't familiar, The Conversation delves into the disconnect between Black men and women, and why relationships don't last the way they did in generations of the past. It's a really amazing read. I recommend it to people ALL the time (lol) because it's just a great book. Whether you're in a relationship, married, single and looking, single and fed up, or just lost in the sauce...The Conversation is a great read. That being said....Where is the Love? Our people come from strong family roots, but as we all know, we were uprooted from our Motherland and brought onto foreign soil, where we had to find our way. Fast forward to welfare being introduced to our country. Men would leave their families because if there was a grown man living in your home, it was seen as his responsibility to take care of you, and financial help (welfare) would not be given to your family. So now we have men absent and women left raising children. We've got mothers telling their little girls "you need to be independent, you don't need a man to take care of you". Little boys have no idea how a man should treat a woman, because they have no concrete example in their homes. Fast forward again to the little boys and girls growing up. The girl-turned-woman goes into every romantic relationship with an "I don't need you" attitude, and men have this instinct to be the provider. To do what their father didn't do. They don't know how to respond to not being needed, so some just leave. It's all a big mess...but these issues are becoming too embedded and taboo. They need to be discussed! We can't keep sweeping our history under the rug and thinking that it doesn't effect who we are today. It does, whether we realize it or not.

Somewhere along the line, the male's physical absence apparently produced an emotional disconnect as well, because our generation doesn't have the same characteristics and statistics as the last one. Many of our grandparents are still married, and had a bunch of kids, so we've got aunts and uncles galore, and our grandparents are the matriarchs and patriarchs of the family...but who will our children and their generations have? With the state of our economy, everyone is focusing on making money, keeping money, and being able to take care of our loved ones financially, but what about emotionally? What about passing on those values that our parents learned from their parents, and so on? Back when our people had NOTHING, we had each other. Where did it all go wrong? Everyone is out for self now, and getting back to a state of unity and love isn't on anyone's to-do list...

x0x0♥