Tag: romance

On Social Media:

Don’t we think it’s a little strange that, in a world of nearly seven and a half billion (7 383 900 000) people, so many of us feel like we’re all alone?

mikegiorgi14 Comments

I’ve always found the term “social media” to be a curious one. 

Admittedly, if you break the word down into its respective body parts – “social” and “media” – it’s a word that makes perfect sense. Yet it’s not its pieces that make it a puzzle. 

The term feels like a misnomer. It doesn’t feel right. I look at social media and I fail to see anything social about it.

Media is not an inherently social entity. From newspapers to Fox News, there is no social interaction actually involved. 

We may feel as though we’re socially interacting. Like we’re connecting with that horoscope columnist who just really seems to “get” us, or the newscaster covering our sports team who seems to always agree with our opinion of the new head coach.

Ron Burgundy: One of the Only News Anchors to Truly Understand Us, San Francisco. [Image Credit: Anchorman]
Ron Burgundy: One of the Only News Anchors to Truly Understand Us, San Francisco.
[Image Credit: Anchorman]

But we’re not.

We’re still sitting alone at the kitchen table, keeping our eyes on the newspaper while we hurriedly force down the coffee we burnt before work.

We’re still messily finishing that crossword on the train with the stranger in a brown suit next to us as our only companion. And no, it doesn’t count as social interaction because we asked him for a four-lettered word for a famous son of Chronos.

The media doesn’t want to interact with us. It wants us to read, to listen, and to watch their version of what’s happening all around you. It wants to tell us what perception of reality to accept. 

Social media, in turn, has taken us one slippery step further down this path of human isolation.

Social media has stolen from us our innate love of society; we have never been more antisocial than we are this very moment.

There was a time, before bullet trains and water spraying jet packs (which are pretty awesome for the record), when our nearest neighbours were fifteen kilometres away and the fastest method of travelling was on horseback. Yet we called on each other weekly, if not daily, to fulfil that natural desire to truly interact with other human beings.

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”  – Aristotle, The Politics.

Fast forward to today, and I haven’t called on my neighbour since before the first Jurassic Park movie came out.

Social media has negatively affected every (formerly) social activity.

I see us capturing moments – beautiful sunrises and breathtaking full moons – through Instagram filters instead of capturing them with our eyes and keeping them in our souls.

We write those moments as Snapchat stories instead of writing them across our hearts, as part of our own stories that are constantly unfolding.

We use the check in button on Facebook to let our friends know where we are and what we’re doing, instead of checking in with a call or catching up with a visit.

We’ve mastered messaging with “abreeves” but forgotten how to carry a face-to-face conversation.

We live tweet sports events from our couch instead of taking a road trip to catch a live sporting event with some friends.

We text acquaintances while we sit around a table with our actual friends.

We don’t notice the love of our life next to us in the cafe because our eyes are down on our phone as we try to find love on Tinder. They walk in and out of our lives while we’re swiping right and left.

We’ve exchanged real friends for followers and lovers for “matches.”

And yet, don’t we think it’s a little strange that, in a world of nearly seven and a half billion (7 383 900 000) people, so many of us feel like we’re alone?

It’s because we are alone. Every social media platform offers an additional layer to a wall we’re building between ourselves and those around us. Another filter. More paint on our masks.

We’re given the means to limit and skew the images of ourselves that we put out there, and everyone else is doing the same. It becomes a terrifying idea to show people who we really are, so we don’t. Everyone tries to be like everyone else.

We’re creating a world where no one will truly know anyone.

I think that’s a tragic thing, because the greatest protectors of the beautiful uniqueness and natural individuality we possess as humans should be all of us, together.

Governments and, further back, religions have always feared and denounced the individual; the threat to the status quo. 

And yet, individuals such as Copernicus, da Vinci, Tesla, Picasso, and Einstein did amazing things by questioning that same status quo, by letting their unique thoughts and feelings be their compass. 

They didn’t follow tradition, and we celebrated them for it.

Self-Portrait (1512) by Leonardo da Vinci.
Self-Portrait (1512) by Leonardo da Vinci.

I’m afraid we’re starting to lose that. We’re falling into line.

Not because of fear or oppression – those things could never break our powerful spirit – but because of distraction.

The irony of it all is that I’m communicating this via an outlet that was only born in the age of social media, and sharing it on multiple social media platforms.

I think our advances in technology and our ability to connect with one another is astounding. 

I’m thankful for Skype, Instagram, and other means of keeping in touch with all of those that I love and miss at home.

I just think it’s important that in our quest to be more connected, we don’t severe our connection to each other; that we don’t become the snake that eats its own tail.

Recognize each other. Appreciate someone when they do something differently, wear something strange, or embrace their authentic self in any way at all. 

You’ll find people start encouraging you to do the same.

And, my God, that will be a beautiful thing.

Be good to each other,

– MG

On Romance:

In those days I wasn’t sure what ensued in her bed chambers afterwards, but I knew it represented the climax – no pun intended – of the romance.

mikegiorgi2 Comments

The moon showed only a silver sliver of its full self.

Laying in bed, I waited patiently for the Cheshire Cat to open his eyes and reveal himself in the night sky. He never did, of course, but still.

There was something about the moon that cloudless night that inspired a deep feeling of romance inside of me.

Romance, I thought with a bit of a laugh. What is Romance?

Well, Google aptly defines romance as:

romance

rə(ʊ)ˈmans,ˈrəʊmans/

noun

1. a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.

“I had a thirst for romance”

2. a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.

“the romance of the sea”

When we were growing up, romance was an easy concept to understand. Every recess was made up of a cohort of young Romeos, all chasing the collective Juliet.

It seemed pretty simple to me in those days. The boy bought (or stole from the neighbour’s garden) flowers, and then professed his love from beneath some sort of balcony. If he was a particularly adept romantic, he would do this by means of a sonnet.

The timing was important; it was best to perform the monologue under a full moon, but during a sunset would also suffice. The woman was, for whatever reason, constantly awake, available to listen, and always waiting for young suitors to visit her at strange hours. At the end of the performance, the Juliet decided she was either:

(1) Not into the idea and sent the boy home, or;

(2) Was satisfied with the romantic gesture and let her hair down for the young man to climb up.

Sure, I might have gotten a few different love stories mixed up at that age, but I had the gist of it. In those days, I wasn’t sure what ensued in her bed chambers afterwards, but I knew it represented the climax – pun intended – of the romance.

As I grew older I began to realize that my vision of what was romantic might not exactly capture the essence of romance. For one, my sisters began to give me an inkling that a truck load of chocolate might better serve a romance than any type of flowers – unless they were chocolate covered and edible. For two, I started to wonder what was in that “happily ever after” that always occurred after the curtains were drawn.

Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet (1884) by Frank Dicksee

We didn’t realize it then, but everything we watched or read during our youth emphasized the beginning of a love story as what should be considered romantic.

The romance always lay in the chase; it was the pursuit of love that was romantic. It was always about that opening gambit and a few initial speed bumps before both prince and princess were ready for that royal wedding. Then the credits rolled.

Even now I think of the happy couple, rosy-cheeked in their romantic infancy, reciting the story of how they met for an audience of half-interested single people. It often runs along the same lines. Initially, the female wasn’t interested but the male romantically wooed her into changing her mind. We cover our hearts and say “aw” when we hear of the cheesy and “romantic” gestures that helped to sway the odds in this particular Romero’s favour.

There’s not much to say after the “how we met” stories concludes; they are in the middle of their happily ever after. The movie is usually over by now. Babies start coming, fights start happening, and a divorce will probably be the result. The spark has faded. The spark that, we’ve been taught, represents the romance. Of course if we see romance – and by an extension, love – in this way, we’re doomed to a never-ending cycle of needing the hunt. Like freezing Neanderthals in the winter, our lives will be spent focusing on chasing the spark, never enjoying the fire we’ve already set ablaze. Is that really what romance is?

I look around me and I see that isn’t true. I see romance everywhere I look. It floats on the breeze that swirls around the elderly couple walking hand in hand in the park. At the arrivals gate in the airport, it swims in the teary-eyes of two lovers locked in an embrace. When two people are separated by an ocean, romance twinkles in the stars they look upon while thinking about each other. It’s in coming home to that familiar face after a long day’s work. It’s in missing someone, even if you just dropped them off. It’s in the strange way you can be overwhelmed with frustration but still love that person with all of your heart.

Romance lives in forgiveness, and understanding, after arguments both big and small. It’s in the first handful of dirt a widower throws on his wife’s coffin. It’s found in the breast pocket of a dead soldier, in the recently dried ink of a letter home to his high school sweet heart. When we’re a shoulder to cry on, romance is that little wet patch of tears they leave on our sweater. When we’re the ones crying, romance is the familiar smell of perfume or cologne that we inhale as we bury our face in their clothes.

The sorrow of lovers parted before they met, laments over promises betrayed, long lonely nights spent sleepless until dawn, pining thoughts for some far place, a woman left sighing over past love in her tumbledown abode – it is these, surely, that embody the romance of love.” – Yoshida Kenkō, A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees.

Not one of us will ever master love, or understand it. That is why everything about love is exciting and mysterious. As such, there is romance in all of it. We just need to move past our Hollywood conception of it and start enjoying the little things. Love isn’t perfect, and neither are we.

Our happiest and most exciting moments with our significant others will lay perilously close to the saddest and most dull ones. It’s all part of it, it’s up to us to appreciate each moment to the very last. There are little Romeos and Juliets in each of us. We are all romantics. We just need to embrace the romance that’s all around us.

Be good to each other,

– MG.

On Love (Part 2):

Be the crazy love you want to see in the world. Be the unconditional love and acceptance you want in your life.

mikegiorgi2 Comments

As humans, we love order. Our entire society is built upon it. We define, separate, categorize, analyze, dissect, reduce, and group everything and everyone around us. We build borders and set boundaries. It helps us to understand complexities greater than ourselves.

We break up our whole world into tiny pieces and keep them in the little boxes we’ve made for them. We define athletic greatness with numbers, statistics, and box scores. We measure wealth with commas, assets, and the contents of our safety deposit boxes. We peeled off the layers of nature until all that remained were atoms and then we sorted them into a table full of neatly named elements and little numbered boxes.

We like to live inside the box. Even our notion of what makes a human being hasn’t escaped this obsession to break things down. We’ve reduced the idea of ourselves to a simple vessel carrying two hundred and six bones, some vital organs, and a built-in laboratory capable of internally conducting complex chemical reactions.

The soul doesn’t scientifically exist because we can’t measure and categorize it. As humans, we love to restrict.

I’ve never been able to fully relate to our society’s ruthless obsession with categorizing everything. Especially when it comes to the notion of love, which has unfortunately fallen prey to these restrictive and reductive tendencies of our species.

I’m not referring to the Shakespearean kind of love – which funnily enough is an example of the categorization I’m referring to – but the type of affinity that occurs naturally between humans. We’ve taken that inherent feeling of togetherness, tenderness, and appreciation toward one another and we’ve broken it down and analysed it to death.

4_Going-on-a-road-trip
Tribal Goodness.

Family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, lovers, enemies, siblings, parents, teachers, team-mates, in-laws, pets, gay, straight, bisexual, co-workers, classmates, platonic, physical, bromance, romance, showmance, mentally stimulating, spiritual connection, intimate, lustful, infatuation, the list is infinite.

We’re taught to rank our love and have been given various definitive categories that we can sweep that love into. They place limitations on what displays of love are acceptable in our relationships depending on the category it falls into. Like an aisle in a grocery store, we force our love into clearly marked boxes and shelve them accordingly.

Looking for way to show your buddy that he’s appreciated? Try a manly, five-tiered handshake to fist-bump-explosion combo, found in aisle five under “bromance.” Looking for a loving way to say goodnight to your daughter? You’ll find just what you need with a kiss-on-the-forehead located in aisle two – “parent-child relationship.”

As a society we’ve bought into this merciless dissection of love despite the fact that it contradicts everything we truly know about it.

Love is a powerful universal force. By its very nature it is raw, wild, and free. It is not something that is tamed, controlled or bottled but something that is channelled, nurtured, and unleashed. It is not restricted by earthly words and its language is spoken from within.

Yet we rush to bury the budding bulbs of love into the labelled drawers society has marked for us. We throw today’s bulb into a drawer labelled “friend-zone” and tomorrow’s into “too old for me.” In these darkened drawers we keep these bulbs and then actually wonder why the love that blooms is as black as Cornelius van Baerle’s tulip.

I think of all the amazing people in my life and I’ve realized it has been the light of a love that was never bottled that has attracted them into my life, and what has kept them here. It is a love which, admittedly, is a love that can be a little silly at times.

1377290_10100301152425820_830006441_n
Bromance? Showmance? Or just a bit of silly and wild love?

I’ve given some of my closest male friends big wet kisses on the mouth when I felt the moment called for such a display of love. Despite the fact they are rugged, heterosexual men, they accept my random smooches on the beak because they know where it comes from. They know it comes from a love that is unfiltered and unrelenting. They know that I know their every fault and all of their vices and yet my love has blossomed infinitely regardless of this.

Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.” – Paulo Coelho, The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession.

This is because wild and natural love grows alongside wild and natural acceptance. The people that remain in my life – near and far – are all people who I’ve loved and accepted in this way.

Whether its an unexpected Skype call or a postcard in the mail, I’m constantly reminded of how strong of a bond is created by just loving people with all of my sincerity.

I truly believe those who are in my circle of love – and those I’m grateful to say include me in theirs – are there through very little influence of my own and largely through the natural and powerful selection of love itself.

They have each accepted and embraced my untamed and crazy love – the love of a wild wolf. They have returned that love with as much or as little love as they possibly can. It doesn’t always add up, but love doesn’t keep score. The important thing is that they have accepted my silly love and, in exchange, I’ve accepted theirs. This is how I know all of the people in my life, all of those I hold dear, are supposed to be here with me.

To be honest, I can’t think of anything more pure, noble, and sincere than letting love continue to govern who is and isn’t in my life.

Love is love, and your love belongs to you alone. It isn’t defined by the norms of your culture or your society. It is defined by however you choose to allow that love to manifest itself.

So go out and unleash your love. Let it be silly. Kiss your bestie. Fist bump your mom or pops. Hug it out with that old lady next door.

Be the crazy love you want to see in the world.

Be the unconditional love and acceptance you want in your life. Don’t tame the love of that wild wolf under your skin.

Stop defining your love. Instead, let your love define you.

Be good to each other,

– MG.

Photos Courtesy of:

Cover Art: Two Lovers In An Interior by a Yellow Blind by Suzuki Harunobu
Women on a Road Trip: http://www.theplaidzebra.com 

On Reliance:

mikegiorgi4 Comments

Our minds are lined with shelves overflowing with advice that we’ve accumulated over the years. Mental libraries, divided by subjects such as love, life, and happiness. Many of the tomes covering these various subjects are made up of simple but memorable sayings to help us along our path. 

Though I believe these expressions are beneficial in keeping the bigger picture in our minds, I find they often lack depth and substance. One such expression I hear used often, and have been guilty of using myself, is:

if you love something, set it free; if it comes back to you, its yours.”

When I paint a picture in my head of what this expression means to me, I picture a person opening a birdcage and letting a yellow canary fly out of a narrow apartment window, or a little boy letting his excited terrier off of the leash in a park. Eventually, both owners have their pets return dutifully back to them. I think this expression serves as a powerful microcosm of the dependent relationship dynamics which characterize many modern romances.

The problem with this expression, and the picture it paints, is it associates the notion of love with both ownership and reliance. I think both the notions of ownership and reliance are contrary to that of love, yet they’ve found a place in many of our intimate relationships.

The one you love is not a car. You didn’t buy him from a salesman. She does not come with ownership papers. In order to set something free you must first be the owner of it (or at least have it in your possession). You had to of restricted his or her freedom in the first place. It seems tragically contradictory to fall in love with something when it is wild and free – whether its a bird soaring in the sky or the beautiful stranger you met on the train – only to try and capture and cage it. We have allowed the complex toxins of private ownership to leak into the simple, pure, and unrestricted stream of love. Loving someone isn’t releasing them. Loving someone is never wanting to cage them in the first place.

Reliance, in my opinion, is a much more subtle and dangerous form of ownership. The canary doesn’t return to its cage out of love, it returns because its the only source of nourishment and drink that it has ever known. The canary has grown to love its chains. It no longer believes in itself. The canary is in a state of dependency and has learned to fear a life without the cage. It fears being apart from the owner it depends on for safety, warmth, food, and water. The decision to return to the owner is both self serving, and convenient. The relationship has, from the outset, fostered a sense of real necessity.

The Bird Cage (1910) by Frederick Carl Frieseke
The Bird Cage (1910) by Frederick Carl Frieseke

I see so many words which emerge during conflict in today’s relationships that expose the same sense of necessity. We have to stay together. We need to work things out. We can’t just give up. These words are followed by the revealing of the foundations of reliance the relationship has been built upon. “She is the only one who understands me.” “No one else will accept me like he does.” “We’ve been through it all together” “I can’t be happy without her.” “I’ll be alone without him.”

We pile up these imagined conclusions as though our world didn’t exist before this person came into our lives. We begin to perceive life with this person as essential to maintaining the things we value in our world. These things range from the relatively narrow in scope, such as a specific circle of friends, a shared living arrangement, custody of the children, or the new puppy, to those broader in scope, such as our ability to be happy, accepted, appreciated, or loved. We become the canary. Our reliance becomes our cage.

I think it’s important to note that not all reliance is bad. Being committed doesn’t mean being caged. Too many people confuse commitment with a lack of freedom. Being in a relationship doesn’t mean being reliant on someone else. I really do hope the people in my life that I love the most know they can rely on me. I hope they know they can come to me for any type of help – for advice (although I can’t promise it will be very good advice), when they are feeling blue, need a shoulder to cry on, a wing man for the night, a hug, the shirt off of my back, or all of the above.

I want my significant other to rely on me. I want her to be certain she can rely on me for unconditional love, acceptance, and support for the rest of her days.

But there is a major difference between being in a relationship where you can rely on one another, and one where one (or both) of you feel like you must rely on your significant other. 

In the former situation, a couple is adding additional wind under each others’ wings. In the latter scenario, one or both partners are chained to the other by shackles cast in iron reliance.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” – Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays.

We must be the canary without the cage. Be responsible for your own happiness, acceptance, self-belief, growth, success, and well-being, because no one else can ever give you those things. Don’t create your own prison by accepting the delusion that someone can.

And, as much as you may want to, you can’t provide any of those things for another person, either. So don’t be the one caging another canary with promises to provide them with those things. 

Instead, accept that you are responsible for your own life, and others have the same obligation to themselves as you do. The sooner you do that, the sooner you’ll find another canary just as wild, free, and as perfect as you are.

There is nothing more powerful than a love that is born out of love. I can’t think of anything more pure or beautiful than two souls soaring together for no reason other than the mutual respect and endless love they share for one another. That is a flight that will last an eternity.

Be good to each other,

– MG.

On Love:

Love will be twelve rounds of the most gruelling fight of your life. It must be constantly struggled for; it is an endless and beautiful war.

mikegiorgi10 Comments

I don’t know exactly what love is, but I know a few things it isn’t. Love is not elusive. It is not an exotic animal endangered by the rampant poaching of unrealistic romantic comedies. It is not a crop that is at a risk of complete exhaustion due to the swelling number of beating hearts starving for it.

Love is as abundant as it was when white knights draped in their chivalry were in the height of fashion. It is as ever-present in us as it was in the immortalized lovers Romeo and Casanova. That universal force we call love has never changed, but our romanticism of it has.

We’ve somehow turned love into a treasure of lore that can only be obtained through toil and trouble. It has become a sort of Holy Grail, only reachable by the brave crusaders of cupid. An alchemist of love requires the perfect concoction of timing, skill, and luck to brew the elusive and everlasting elixir of Eros.

In between stone masonry and tax evasion, we’ve left love to collect dust on the shelf of dying arts. Why have we done this? Because it was easy to.


It’s easy to want to fall in love. It’s easy to be in love with the idea of love. It’s easy to imagine laying on a bed of roses and feeling completely vulnerable in the safety of that special someone’s arms wrapped tightly around you.

It’s easy to hope for your own Ryan Gosling or Rachel McAdams as you watch the Notebook with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. It’s easy to paint, with the most passionate of oils, that perfect portrait of the young unrelenting love that we want to find.

the-notebook-kiss
I mean, who DOESN’T like the idea of a rain-soaked kiss? [Source: The Notebook]


It’s also easy to make excuses. It’s easy to build makeshift walls. They are quickly and easily erected.

Timing, distance, near or remote plans for the future, work, school, gym, yoga, grocery shopping, career progression, meal preps, pets, television series box sets, weekly (or daily) fro-yo, the past, the weather, the opinions of friends and family, or that new book that Oprah recommended, are some of the many excuses – big and small – that we use to protect us from opening ourselves up to the love that constantly surrounds both you and I.

I know very little about this crazy world we’re caught spinning in. When it comes to love I know even less, but I do know three things for certain.


The first is that there is no such thing as a perfect human being. You’re not perfect, God knows I’m not perfect, and that sweet boy or cute girl you’ve had your eye on at work certainly isn’t perfect either. Taylor Kitsch is probably the closest I’ve seen to perfection and I’m sure even he has a single flaw, somewhere.

I won’t be as cliché as to suggest that love is instead when two imperfect people are perfect for each other, because I don’t believe that either.

What I do believe is that love  will be twelve rounds of the most grueling fight of your life. 

It must be constantly struggled for; it is an endless and beautiful war. The very idea of perfection should be erased completely from our conception of love.

Love exists not between two imperfect people perfect for each other, but two lovers perfectly and sincerely at peace with one another’s imperfections, so much so that they’ve even come to regard those flaws with admiration.

Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins in the television show Friday Night Lights.
Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins in the television show Friday Night Lights. [Source: Friday Night Lights]

The second thing I know is that none of us have been without pain in our lives. Whether it was a family member, close friend, significant other, or that dickhead on your school bus, we have all been hurt by someone we have let into our lives.

That isn’t to say our hands are not bloodless, either. Conscious of it or not, we’ve done our share of the hurting as well. Every single cut we’ve suffered has left a scar and, no matter how small or insignificant it may appear on the surface, every one of them causes us to flinch a little more at the prospect of love’s left hook.

We put our gloves up and we duck for cover. We step out of the ring because we remember the pain of those scars from our first few rounds. Scars that still feel fresh in our minds. Scars we’re afraid to look at.


We should, like the prized pugilists that we are, wear those scars as the badges of honour they are. We should be proud of every moment we’ve spent in the ring – regardless if it was a win or a loss.

Whether it was a grade three knock-out from a fling that only lasted for first recess or a unanimous decision that ended a five year romance, we need to keep our chin up. We’ve loved and lost, and that’s something we need to take pride in. It’s better than never have taken a swing.

So we can all keep comparing our scars, or we can actively work on de-constructing that flawed personal belief that we’ve somehow suffered more acutely than the person who’s chasing us. Either way, let’s get back into the ring.

The course of true love never did run smooth.” William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The third and final certainty I possess is that love will not come to you. It will not jump your fortified walls or smash through the obstacles you’ve put in front of it. Sure, there’s always the chance that you’ll be caught out in a vulnerable moment outside of those walls, and fall deeply in love with someone.

There’s a far greater chance, however, that your many years of perfecting your defences will produce barriers too well constructed to be breached. Eventually, you’ll have effectively exhausted all of your excuses, and wake up at fifty years old as a successful, strong, and incredibly lonely person.

It’s extremely hypocritical to expect people to open themselves up to our love when we’re not willing to do the same.

I’m not saying to settle. I’m not saying to look for love just for the sake of loving. I’m just saying we should try to open ourselves up to love. Chase that butterfly feeling when you get it rather than trying to snuff it out.

I think we’d all be surprised with the results if we, for once, stopped being our own largest hindrance of real love in our lives. There will be no perfect time, and you will never truly be ready. You and I were born to love. You just need to let love in.

Be good to each other,

– MG.