What Are You Looking For?

I have learned to really, truly despise this question.

What are you looking for in a guy?

No one wants the real answer. They want the top three stereotypical descriptive words of a guy who sounds like just about any guy in any yeshiva/office/pit. I mean, let's be real. We all want the same thing. A nice guy, with good values and beliefs who wants to build a nice home.

Do I care what he wears? Do I care if he has a degree? Do I care if he is from in town or out of town?

Maybe.

What am I really looking for?

I want a guy who isn't afraid to be vulnerable. Who isn't afraid to feel something more than surface level superficiality. I want a guy who is constantly looking for meaning in his life. Does he let the small things slip past his eye? Or does he look for a deeper explanation? Does he recognize that G-d is truly a part of his life? Does he learn because that's what he is supposed to do, or because he knows that is actually the very pulse of his existence? Does he care about others? And I don't mean, "hey, how are you?" and then walks away. Does he genuinely take an interest in others? 

Will he appreciate that I recognize G-d through helping children who are fighting illness? Would he say "oh that's so depressing" and totally miss the mission that I want to achieve? Will he understand that yes, a child dying is painful, but that it doesn't have to break me? Will he cry with me? Would he hold me and let me feel the pain I need to feel and then help me to move on?

Will he read my poems? Will he appreciate my creativity? Will he accept my inability to be still and my desire to do more, to be more? Will he learn Nesivos Shalom and Rav Kook with me and accept that my Hashkafos are more confusing than a trip into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory but nevertheless, I am still going to break through the glass ceiling and become closer to G-d?

The guy I am looking for cannot be summed up in a sentence or two. He cannot be expressed in ten words or less. He is more than just a piece of paper. Maybe that's why I find the traditional system so hard. When you are searching for meaning and reason, you don't think that it can be found in the pages of a book or on a printed sheet of paper. Meaning must be felt. It must be manipulated in your heart and soul. I have a hard time believing that because his paper says this and my paper says that then we must be a match. Get. Real.

Life is so much deeper, so much more vast than that. We as people are so complex, so intricate and real that to expect individuals to sum themselves in a few categories is so wrong.

I get it. It';s the best we have. but let;s be honest: the best we have is a pathetic attempt at building a world that requires so much more effort and honesty if we want to solve the crisis.

Let's rip up the papers. Let's shred them into little pieces. Let's give guys, girls, people searching for their other half, the chance to be real, to be themselves. Let's talk. Let's share. Let's recognize that we are only suffocating our future by living in the past. The system worked for a time. It did. But I know too many good people getting burned by a system that is flawed.

So... what am I looking for in a guy? I am looking for a guy who is looking for me.

I hope we find each other soon. And that everyone else who is searching finds their other half with great haste, great clarity, and great love.