Every once in a while we talk about something and she says, "You should blog about that! People would be interested!" To which I usually reply, "They would? Seriously?"
"Well, I would, anyway," she answers.
Therefore you are hereby informed that this blog is unequivocally Annie's fault.
Finding and Capturing Unicorns
Many centuries in the past (it feels like it anyway), when I was a kid, there was no internet. (You may scream now.) There also were very few true nerds. There wasn't any place on earth where being a nerd was cool in any way. We found ourselves at the bottom of the social ladder with the kid who ate his boogers (and we accepted him too!) There were even fewer female nerds. Of course, this has almost always been the case, but back in my day it was even more extreme. They were almost mythical creatures.
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| I had a Commodore 64. |
Genetically speaking, what we call "beauty" is also rare, and so to actually find a pretty nerd girl in my day was like finding a unicorn. (But you knew I was going to say that.) In grade school, of course, I didn't care if the girls were nerds are not. I just wanted them to actually talk to me. It was kind of like those 80's movies where the nerd guy would fall in love with the beauty queen -- except in my case when I ask her out at the end of the movie she says, "Go jump in a lake!" and all her pretty friends laugh in my face. (Ok, so that actually happened.)
There was one beautiful girl in elementary school that was nice to me and in my mind she was a princess. Raven black hair, crystal blue eyes, pale skin with a dusting of freckles -- Sharon was royalty to me. She even would dance with me sometimes at our little grade school dances. Which makes me wonder:
Why the heck did our Catholic school give us dances with music from Chicago and REO Speedwagon playing in the background when we were in third grade?
Did they expect us to explore our budding sexuality at at time when boys had cooties and girls were gross? Whatever the reason, thank you, Catholic school, for letting me experience relationship rejection early and often.
Regardless, back then, it wasn't about finding a nerd girl, it was about finding any girl who would talk to me. Okay, I lied just now. It was about finding a reasonably cute girl who met my standards who would talk to me.
I just realized I had relationship standards when I was nine years old. I'm mildly disturbed.
More disturbed: Googling "scary nun."
The truth is there were some kind of nerdy girls in my school but I was too busy dreaming about my princess and looking for a unicorn. There was a girl in my class, for instance, who was a foot taller than all the boys and had awkward huge glasses and a mop of curly hair who liked me a lot. I rejected her -- even though I was really skinny, had coke bottle glasses, and a bowl cut.
The Problem with Fantasy
Don't get me wrong, I love fantasy and reading and gaming have dozens of benefits -- when done in moderation. A lot of my morals have come from fantasy and comic heroes: love for family, sacrifice, and doing the right thing even when no one is looking. Yet, at least for me, it made me think back then that I was the hero. This movie was about me. I could eventually conquer and have the beautiful princess and the castle and win everything. I never thought that maybe someone would be better for her than me. I was the best. I had to be, it was my book, my story.
Some of this I am literally realizing as I write this. Some I've already known -- I've prayed for years that God free me from this idea of "beauty" that I've idolized in my mind. Still, even today, the movies, comics, and books push the perfect figure and the perfect face -- but the lie that creeps into your soul is that you can and should have someone that looks like that.
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| So much sexy on one screen. |
The problem is, the actors on the screen are the top 0.1% of the most beautiful in the world, that's why they are there. The drawings of people in comics with perfect figures are not realistic. And so we chase after unicorns. "If I can only find my beautiful gamer girl who loves all my stuff and realizes that I'm the hero..." You might as well be wishing for super powers. It's not real.
Living in Bizarro World
What I was going to talk about in this blog is how there are so many more nerds now, all over the planet. Now there's more nerd boys and girls, and they are different from when I was a kid. Yes there are; it's different now, but it seems to me that many of those lovely nerds I call my own are also trapped in Bizarro world. We've taken reality and smashed it together with our fantasy world and begged, insisted and forced it to meld together into a kind of mess of unfulfilled dreams and expectations.
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| This panel says it all |
Now we have unicorns -- beautiful fan girls in amazing costumes who have thousands and millions of followers. Nerd boys everywhere tell themselves that they are the hero that can win these "dream girls." So they follow them, take pictures of them, and message them. Cosplay girls get so many messages they can't even answer them all (including many they wouldn't want to!) However, deep down, these girls are just human beings. Idolizing them and making them into unicorns is a disservice. They have feelings and hopes and are imperfect just like everyone else. Dating someone like this will not suddenly change your life or make you instantly happy -- unless she happens to be the right person for you and you are the right person for her.
Sadly, I believe some of the unicorns, these beautiful fan girls, are in the same Bizarro world that the rest of us are. They get to live a bit of the fantasy world -- the adulation, the feeling of being a hero and the main character of the story -- but then reality hits and life is hard and unfair. They get dumped and rejected just like any of us. They are not immune to tragedy -- illness, death, pain. Life isn't magically better if you happen to be a pretty cosplayer.
Imperfect is Okay
We all can get caught up in our fantasy worlds from time to time -- and it's wonderful to have these temporary indulgences. However, I have allowed my protagonist perspective to influence my life for too long. I'm going to imagine other people as the main character in the story. I won't hold myself up to the impossible idea of being a hero and everything coming out right for me in the end -- instead I'll just do my best and accept whatever story is mine, all the while happily being part of my friends stories.
I realize this is just one perspective and life is complex and people are multifaceted. You may be a nerd and not live on Bizarro world with many of us, and that's great! If you are stuck in Bizarro world I hope that you will realize that the fantasy world and the real world are separate -- and being a hero in the real world isn't about putting on a costume, or how you look or talk. It's not about who likes you and doesn't like you. It's about who you are on the inside.
Being Happy in the Real World
I'm not going to claim I'm an expert at being happy, though I've studied it for a time now. I've found that true happiness comes from serving others. I've found these brief moments of bliss when I'm doing something good and fulfilling and I completely forget about myself. I stop worrying what I look like, what people think of me, whether a woman I met likes me... I don't exist for a while. The only thing that exists is the experience.
I've found that friends and family, having people close to you, are more important than things and stuff. In fact, I've decided that I want to live in a community where I'm surrounded by people all the time where we depend on each other. Sometimes it's risky to try to have close friends, but this is a risk worth taking.
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| Friends? |
Setting realistic goals and meeting them keeps you in the real world with real accomplishments. And at the risk of sounding cliche -- love. Love others. Love those who like you, and those who hate you. Love those you know and those you don't know. Grow your heart so big that no amount of trouble will outweigh it. Accept and love yourself for who you are. You're imperfect. You don't have super powers. You won't always get the unicorn, but love, love will be enough. Love and don't stop. See people with your "real world" glasses and leave Bizarro world behind.
You're not a lone hero, but you're part of a cast of thousands of us nerds! Love your fellow nerds and serve them, expecting no reward except the act itself. Or you could decide that I have no idea what I'm talking about and I'm crazy. It's possible; I'm imperfect, you know.
P.S. I made this video which somehow became relevant by the end of this blog.
