A Hell of a Good Man...

I once had a very disturbing conversation with a young woman at my old church. She was a few years younger than me (I expect she still is), and one of those friendly acquaintances you tend to pick up who aren't exactly BFFs, but you'd happily have lunch with them or invite them to your birthday party.

Anyway, in the course of the conversation she worked out that I was single, at which point she immediately offered to set me up with a guy she knew.

Now, I had, on previous occasions, met the fellow in question, and I had found him to be the kind of person you nod to, before turning to talk to someone you actually like. I wouldn't actively avoid him, but five minutes of polite conversation would be about as much as either of us would really get out of the other before completely exhausting our reason for being in the same room.

I thought it was an awfully strange suggestion on her part, as she would surely know me well enough to know I wouldn't get along well with him.

I politely told her I wasn't interested, and then attempted to change the subject. Not to be deterred, she immediately suggested another guy - one even less suited to me than the first. In doing so, she also made it clear that her main criteria for attempting to make the match was the fact that "he's single".

Yes, that was her sole consideration.

Somehow, in her universe, the idea of finding someone attractive, interesting or sympathetic (in the older sense of the word) had no relevance. It didn't matter if you shared no interests, had wildly differing opinions on most things and didn't find each other appealing in the least. You're single, he's single, what's the problem?

I was on the verge of explaining to her that there was a little more involved in finding a "match" than just grabbing the nearest available man on offer, but one look at her face told me it would be a waste of time. She was a "simple" girl - in that she was naive and uncomplicated - and it was easy to see she was like that because she wouldn't understand such complexities, even if she could.

Besides, it was an attitude that was somewhat endemic among the "youth" in that church: Better to have someone than no one at all.

At least, that's how I saw it, being outside the "intense set". I don't think I was too far wrong, given that at least four marriages in that set never made it past two years. That was one of the reasons why I don't go to that church any more. I didn't think the youth had the healthiest approach to life, and I didn't think the "mature adults" were paying enough attention, or making the effort to try to steer them right. But, that's another story.

It was sometime later that I bought a Circe Link CD "Moody Girl", including the song "Hell of a Good Man", which seemed a much healthier way of looking at the whole "boy-meets-girl" scenario, and I wished I could ram it in the ears of some of my young friends at that church:

It takes a hell of a good man/ to be better than/ no man at all...

It's something I think applies to a lot of things in life: Don't settle for something that isn't what you want just because you haven't found what you want yet.

And that's my profound thought for today.