Toss this log on the fire and smoke it.

I’m bored. Let’s play a game. Would you rather…experience something that is quick and painful but is beyond your perceived boundaries or, something long and arduous (still painful) but percieved within your normal realm of ability?

To give you context to the hypothetical question: you’re a participant on the show the Amazing Race. You have a series of pit stops you have to go to along the way to a designated finish line in a foreign country and this is the dilemma you encounter. You have a pit stop where you could very well take the short cut but it be painful quick and possibly not something you can achieve or something that seems easier but takes you a long time.

I recently watched an episode where there was this pair of brothers that were in dead last on the Amazing Race. They had the option of doing an incredibly difficult task where they got to balance logs on their forehead or they could carry them up temple steps.

As I watched, glued to the boob tube, all I could think of as these incredibly chiseled cowboys strategized at the task of balancing several 20 foot beam poles on their forehead and walk 40 yards balancing the precarious log like flag poles across a finish line -- the task seemed virtually impossible. But together with sheer determination, teamwork and downright drive to brand something …errr…not quite sure what, perhaps, their opponents behinds, they finished the leg of the journey in 1st place.

Meanwhile every other team chose to carry a series of similar logs up the most crazy steps I’ve seen in a Buddhist temple. It took them a long time and what had seemed like less painful from the get go turned into a series of setbacks for everyone else. One person dry heaved. Others just couldn't handle it.

The end results from both decisions were unknown but what if one situation looks simpler from the outside looking in than the other situation. The rewards are unknown, the stakes are high. But one is perceived as easier. What would you do? What if the decision involved your emotions, in terms of pain or loss.

This hypothetical came to mind this week as I discussed some of the harder topics of life with close friends. If the known variable in a situation is pain than the general consensus from those I spoke with, our automatic response seems to be to not take the risk, to stay in the comfort zone of the supposedly known variables of life and try to avoid pain or anything that might rattle our emotions. But nothing is completely known. That’s not our place. Omniscience is one super power that does not belong to humankind.

The future is a mystery and will continue to be that way. And if we choose the road that’s most travelled, it is safe to say we are content in our ignorance of the unknown. (Where would the cowboys be if they hadn’t taken that risk.)

Like the Princess Bride wisely once said, "Life is pain. Anyone who is tries to tell you otherwise is trying to sell you something." It is inevitable in every situation. So why do we prefer to think that we fair better by trying to choose what seems easiest from the outside looking in. With high risk yields higher chances for greater rewards, return on investment from a financial perspective. How does this not apply with other variances of context to this hypothetical situation.

And if we don’t invest our lives in life, than how do we truly expect to live as we should? This post isn't necessarily supposed to answer any questions but spark them. One pitstop task is no better off than the other, it's just different. Are you willing to sacrifice, take risks? If so, what are you currently risking? Or avoiding?

Road Runner Dating & Albert Einstein

Growing up we had a tradition. Every Saturday morning I would rise early, make myself a bowl of cereal and try to convince my dad to get out of bed and come watch early morning cartoons. He’d rarely indulge my exuberance as from an early age I had a habit of rising with the sun and having something extremely unimportant to tell my sleeping parents.

From what my parents have now told me, it often meant I wound up on the back enclosed patio with a handful of rocks. Hey, the over-abundance of words I conjure up annoys even myself sometimes. I don't blame them for it. In fact I have no recollection of it so I'm not scarred. However if social services ever found out about it, I might have been a product of the foster system.

Nevertheless, Saturday morning cartoons were a saving grace for my parents. By the time Loonie Toons was on, Dad would be out of bed ready to laugh alongside me and the brothernator –aka Joel.

It impresses a fond memory upon my heart or at least it does up until I reached the part in the show where the Road Runner short came on. It was such an agonizing short for me as a child. I would sit there every time and believe that maybe, one day, Wylie E. Coyote might catch up with that pest of a bird, the Road Runner.

But it hit me recently in pondering how this simple cartoon has a lot of relevancy in the dating field, one which also causes as much agony and strife for most individuals in this age old traditional pursuit.

There is this ever so common human condition that we all suffer from in a lot of ways. I’m sure you’ve heard of it it’s called: we want what we can’t have. And we often learn the hard way that it’s just not worth it. Stop. Do some self-reflection, evaluation, seek wise counsel and prayer, or we just keep doing what Wylie E. does and just keep running like a headless chicken.

Now can you envision Wylie stopping his pursuits. Re-evaluating just how much is truly in the budget for the explosives, potentially maybe re-assessing why he’s running after the silly bird in the first place. The Cost –Benefit ratio just doesn’t balance. Deciding that Swiss Chalet would suffice as he is too hungry to continue going but alas, he does not.
But succulent rotisserie chicken just doesn’t cut it for Wylie and neither does settling for anything even remotely reasonable.

I read an article in Chatelaine about a woman who regretted not settling for any of the men she dated in her 30s. She’s now in her 40’s with a son who she went through artificial insemination for. A product of the whole pursuit I suppose. But hey, I can say that I would probably go through the exact same thing if I were her.

Her big statement hits home a very logical truth though. Her initial statement to women is that settling down requires settling. No man will meet perfection and vice versa. It’s incredibly simplistic yet we still seem to turn our noses up at everything but Road Runner.

I suspect we subconsciously do it because we recognize it as frivolous. It requires so little of our investment and heart that it's just easier than actually putting ourselves out there for someone that Yenta would advise us to be matched with.

This cycle will continue. But when is it an appropriate time to call it quits and where do whims meet logic? Wylie should have turned in the TNT after the second time. That’s my theory.

After all, I think it speaks to the adage fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. Fool me thrice, isn’t that the definition of insanity, or wait, am I mixing up Albert Einstein with speed dating?

Then again, I don't think good ol' Albert even has an equation that deferrentiates between finding true love and figuring out true compatibility versus chasing after a bird while you're blind folded with a stick of dynamite in your hand. Just some food for thought that has been rolling around my head.