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By Jose Angelo D. Cantera, Contributor
As much as I hate to admit it, I’m one of
those people who grew up watching Disney classics.
Along with the Kurt Cobain posters and Jim
Morrison T-shirt, I grew up forced to watch thin and beautiful
cartoon women, cleaning the floor, talking to animals and being
rescued by this thing called love at first sight.
What can I say? It was the 90s. It was the
perfect time for films like Titanic and Pretty Woman because back
then, having someone who is smitten by you solves everything. It
didn’t matter how poor you were or how far off you’ve been
driven by an evil step-mother, all you need is a pretty face, a
beer-bottle of a body, a high-pitched voice and a beautiful gown to
crash a grand ball with and everything will be fine. A prince on a
white horse will come by one day and sweep you off your feet in the
middle of your cleaning and off you go to your happy ending.
But what if you’re too big to be swept off
your feet? What if you don’t have a “pretty” face and the only
thing beer-related that can be resembled to your body is the can?
What if your singing is like an awful impersonation of Patti Smith?
What if you can’t afford to buy a gown? And more importantly, what
if you don’t want to be swept off your feet?
What becomes of your happy ending?
Well it has been more than two decades since the
80s. But we can’t deny the fact that even until know —after the
popular run of Sex and the City and Murphy Brown’s feud over
single parenting with a Vice President who can’t even spell
potato(e)—we can’t deny the fact that a lot of the single men
and women out there can’t help but feel bitter, especially since
Valentines Day has already come and gone.
But you can’t really blame them. Valentines
Day is one of the most lucrative days of the year. In the United
States, as reported by E. Lund in “Forget the roses and candy; try
ingenuity,” Americans spent an estimated $13 billion in 2004 for
Valentine’s merchandise. And in Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai
China, as reported by the People’s Daily in 2002, more than half
of those surveyed bought Valentine gifts for their loved ones.
That’s pretty big considering the population of China.
With that information, and knowing that you are
one of the dismal few who won’t be getting adorably useless
trinkets like teddy bear key chains from someone special, it can be
quite depressing. So much that being single has obtained such a
negative image in the eyes of society.
Almost everyone pities you when you’re single.
They give advice, they give you make-overs, and set you up on dates
with some desperate stranger as if you’re some wannabe-American
trying to get a green card.
What’s so bad about being single anyway?
Sure you’d most likely be dateless on
Valentine’s Day, but then again, that day only comes once a year.
And being dateless doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be
alone; you’ve got friends, family and other unwanted but still
time-consuming guests. And, considering how liberal society is
nowadays, being single doesn’t necessarily mean that you
wouldn’t have anyone to share the sack with, or that it will be
like that forever.
These days, the single life is not so bad. And
whether you believe it or not, it has its own advantages. This
so-called pitiful status offers something that some couples don’t
have; like a great deal of freedom.
As a single person, you can do whatever you want
without having to worry about displeasing your better half. You can
experiment. You can smoke without having to open every window in the
house, you can turn on the stereo as loud as you want with the same
song repeating as much as you want, you can make mistakes and not
worry about having to share its consequences with somebody else, and
more importantly, you can grow as a person.
By a respectable degree, being single teaches
you how to be self- sufficient. And, all that “alone-time” can
help you in discovering who you really are and what you really want.
It basically prepares you for the future (whether you’ll be
spending it with someone or not.) It helps you in being either a
responsible and confident partner or a stable person who won’t
fall flat on your face just because you don’t have anyone to hold
your hand.
And as far as happy endings go, the single life
can free you from the need to wait for your own version of a prince
on a white horse to sweep you off your feet and take you there. It
gives you the strength and the courage to pick yourself up and get
there on your own.
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