Dear Ms. Right, From Steel

How can I describe you when I only need you to pull me out of the bottomless pit of my self-absorption? If I could imagine you, I wouldn’t need you.

But I want someone who takes life seriously—who reads Jane Austen for the story and not the cover picture of Mr. Darcy with his cravat undone, and who isn’t in the foreground of all her Facebook pictures. I’m sorry, but the picture should be “the Taj Mahal” and not “I went to India.” And most of all, who doesn’t think I’m a snob for saying all that; because a snob is another sort of person who likes things for some other reason (the distinction they give him) than what they actually are.

But I do want someone who can put with me when I’m being conceited, boring, obtuse; who’s patient and kind.

For all the luxuries, conveniences and freedoms we enjoy, I think we live in a time of unusual psychological stress. People search for community by reducing themselves to one dimension and become punks, goths, stoners, juggaloes. Or they make themselves “unique” by presenting whatever information they’ve gathered as a philosophy; and it is unique, but that doesn’t make it profound. No wonder so many people seem “crazy”—isn’t it true that the world right now is basically crazy? But if you’ve weathered that storm without losing your sense of self, I think you’re a keeper.