For some context, I have been doing some meditative and contemplative practices to cultivate my mindfulness over the past few months. I have achieved several breakthroughs in my ability to look at myself from the second -person perspective and really notice when, what and how I am framing what I am experiencing.

How is this relevant? Well…I now realise that situations involving myself and an attractive counterpart gets framed in terms of the prospect of dating. Many of the guys probably (most definitely lol) might have noticed how a girl’s physical attractiveness and your relative “value”, in whatever terms career, status, attractiveness or some other dating relevant metric, becomes SALIENT. That is, they become foregrounded and other aspects become backgrounded, for example, maybe her character (not personality), prospective roles both playing in the given situation, and etc. Everyone has experienced how the physical attractiveness of people gets you nervous or stumble your words or gets you to flirt or start doing a stand up routine. Suddenly you become a court jester juggling knives in the air trying to impress your king or queen.

If you are mindful enough you can catch yourself and remind yourself you have framed the situation in that way and you can re-frame it in a more appropriate way to reduce bullshitting yourself. Right? The other girl, in fact, could not and does not care about you, she is simply being nice and saying hello, so take off your goofy star cap and stop juggling your knives, you clown!!!! (lol)

On a serous note, I feel we get trapped in how we frame the situation. We become prisoner of dating, imprisoned inside the prison of a particular type of framing. But, the prison is of our making. We identify ourselves as Chad or whatever the loser counterpart is; LMV or HMV; physical attractive or ugly, etc and assign the other an identity as “in my league or outside my league; too good for me or I got a shot, etc. The former is the role we play and the latter is the role assigned to our counterpart. But, since, we build the prison, we also hold the key to our own freedom.

How do we become free? Tell me your ideas or stories? Have you become free?