A Zing Ain’t a Thing

The fam and I watched Hotel Transylvania the other night. A bit late for Halloween, but hey, why not? Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. It was funny and imaginative and had most of a good message (let people grow and go their own way). I can get behind that.

However.

One thing that rubbed me the wrong way about the movie was that a good portion of the plot revolved around the idea that each person has one (and only one) soul mate. The movie described it as a “zing.” You meet each other, and you instantly know. And if you let that one zing get away, then you’re basically hosed, because that was your one chance right there.

That concept? I’m not cool with that at all.

I don’t want my kids going through life looking for the one person they “zing” with, and waiting for that person to come along before they commit to anything. Don’t get me wrong. Denisa and I hit it off immediately, after we went on our first date. But the first time I saw her? I thought she was cute, but there was no magic jolt that went through me to let me know she was different. (Sorry, Denisa. Just keeping it real here.) Once I was with her one on one for a while, THEN I could tell a really big difference between the way I got along with her and the way I’d gotten along with everyone else up to that point, but the concept of “Meet and zing” just seems so unrealistic.

“But Bryce,” you say. “It’s just a kids show. Don’t be so uptight about it.”

But I really think little things like this can add up to serious problems for people down the road. After all, the idea of a soul mate is hardly new, and kids can get some funny ideas in their heads very easily. But let’s assume for a moment that “zing” is a real phenomenon. That there is one person out there, and you’ll know it when you meet them. Here are a few problems I see with that.

1. How do you know when you’ve met them? If you’ve never zinged before, when do you know what a real zing is? Because I’d been attracted to a fair number of girls before Denisa. I’d had big crushes in high school and college. I’d had other girl friends I thought I was crazy about. Denisa blew all of those out of the water. But what if I’d settled for a false zing? It felt different, so I went for that, never knowing there were better fits for me out there?
2. What happens if you zing after you’re already married? You’ve already promised to live the rest of your life or spend eternity with someone else, but now you’ve zinged. Does that trump those promises? Why would it?
3. How in the world can a momentary zing be expected to translate into a successful marriage? You don’t know the person. You don’t know anything about them other than what they look like. “Hubba hubba” isn’t exactly the platform to build the rest of your life on.

I could go on, but I’m not going to. I clearly have issues with this. So what is my personal approach? What’s my alternative to zinging?

Going out and getting some dating experience. Get to know plenty of people in plenty of situations. Spend a bunch of time with them. You’ll learn as much about you as you will about them. What makes you mad? What irritates you? What do you like? What makes you happy? The better you know yourself, the easier it will be for you to recognize when you’ve really hit it off with someone special.

Denisa reminded me yesterday that it was the 15th anniversary of our first date. The only reason I asked her on the date was because I was trying to do just that: date many girls. You can’t know what you’re missing if you don’t know what’s out there. She’d sat near me in German Phonetics class for two months, and while she’d seemed nice, I didn’t know her well enough to know much about her at all.

Thank goodness I’m a goal oriented person.

Anyway. There’s my rant for the day. Hope you’re having a zingiful afternoon!