Kevin's Love-List

So a friend asked me what's important to me in a prospective life partner:

This list is in two parts. The first, Interior Traits, are attributes the person has with or without my being there. The second, Symbiotic Traits, are qualities which manifest when two people relate to each other, based on both people, in this case, me and the hypothetical person.

Interior Traits:

• Happy people are better than sad people.

• 'Smart'ness (I hate the word 'smarts'): This term is very different than intelligence. An intelligent person can tell you how to integrate the velocity of a tomato falling from a hot air balloon as a function of its x component, but smart person is the one in the balloon, dropping tomatos on the Stanford Marching Band. Smart people are aware of what other people think. They do things with purpose, make interesting conversation, have intriguing (or just plain strange) original ideas, and don't need a calculator to impress others. To quote "Joe vs. the Volcano": "90% of the people in this world are always asleep, but 10% are awake, and they live their lives in a constant state of wonderment at the world around them." These are the people that I like being with and like being like.

• Beauty: Now wait, before I get jumped on for this one, read me out. Physical attraction can be a powerful thing, and in my experience I haven't found any specific physical attributes that are always a turn-on (except maybe dimples). Actually, there is a face I have in my mind, and sometimes, now and then, I'll see someone that looks alot like her and I'll stop dead in my tracks, but that's a rare thing, and I haven't met someone with that face who's got much else on this list, or else I'd be married right now. What I mean by beautiful is a really subjective thing for me. I think that the simplest way to describe what I think of as beauty is how well the insides and outsides of a person match up. I'm not going to take the fall for the darwinistic programming that makes me feel how I do, nor will I attempt to critique a society that judges me by my attractions. Anyhow, all that aside, I do believe that there is a link between how people look and how people act, and if you switch two beautiful people's minds, you might end up with something less than the sum of its parts. I'm no Oracle, but I guess what this means is that someone who knows themself inside and out is inherently more attractive than someone who's still trying to figure out who they are. If you're looking for a literal answer of what I find attractive, I can only say that everyone I've ever dated (after the age of 13, anyhow) has had straight or wavy hair. Everything else changes.

Symbiotic Traits:

• Passion/Lust: There are people in this world that are by nature timid. There are people that feel uncomfortable looking someone in the eye for too long. They calculate, overanalyze, and panic their way out of any chance they might have to be with someone. One day they touch someone. It might be someone who they've never met until they brushed shoulders in the elevator, or it might be someone they've worked alongside for years, but never noticed. At one exact moment, both of these people have a switch flipped inside them, and they must have each other. This isn't love; this is lust, and unlike the unrequited lust you've always had for someone behind their backs, when *this* switch is flipped, both people know it and act then, or forever know that that moment has passed, whether they acknowledge it or not. Lust on its own can be great when it's not problematic, but lust with love is a truly beautiful (and really fun) thing, and is a vital part of a successful relationship.

• Inspiration: That quality that makes you want to go out and conquer the world just to put it on her doorstep. Like my comment before about being awake, Inspiration happens when two awake people connect, and create such a state of (for lack of a better term for this metaphor) 'awakeness' in each other that it can only be described as an urgent need to live to the fullest.

• Mutual Understanding: This is not to be confused with trust; trust is a weird thing. Trust is like faith, it's believing without evidence. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big believer in trust, just as billions of people are big believers in faith, but the entire concept of trust is rooted in the basic truth that there are things you don't know, and you are taking it on faith that those things aren't bad, or won't come around to hurt you. While trust is a handy thing for monetary transactions and even friendships, lifelong love is best based on something deeper. Along with a symbiosis that inspires passion and exigence is an understanding of who the other person is. Like my explanation above of how I define beauty, as the knowledge someone has of themself, so is mutual understanding the knowledge one member of the relationship has of the other. Simply put, you trust someone to pay money on their tab because the possible consequences of their not doing so (bills, credit rating, impoundment, imprisonment) are not worth the monetary gain. On the other hand, you know your mate won't do something to hurt you, even if they are certain not to be found out, because you know what they feel for you, and you know that they know what you feel for them.

Confusing? Yes, and probably not true for everyone, but then if everyone had the same answers, nobody would bother asking the questions.