anatomy of a rant

I just finished watching reruns of Season 4 of Grey’s Anatomy. I like the show. I like the medicine. I love Dr. Miranda Bailey. I love every other doctor in that show. But I hate, I hate Meredith Grey. I hate the protagonist of the show. I hate the character the show is named after. She is an annoying, self-absorbed, un-gorgeous, painfully whiney, stupid doctor. She gets this dreamy guy and she keeps throwing it away. How can one person keep messing up and still keep on being forgiven? So what if her father left her when she was 5, Christina’s father died when she was 5. So what if her mom was a giant bitch, Carev’s mom had a psychotic breakdown when he was a boy and he dealt with it on his own. Even if the Chief Resident calls her on a wrong she did, like operating on a patient, she brings up her dead mother and the pathetic life she is living, rather than being answerable to him, the Chief! And if that wasn’t annoying enough, she manages to make everyone draw their attention away from major issues because she is too busy drowning or putting her hands on a bomb. She is one of those people whom you would hate if she worked in your office, because she’s the one who knows the boss and gets personal favours from him. She didn’t write anything on her intern exam, but got a second chance. But when George fails, he doesn’t. Is that normal? What this show is teaching me is a lot of scientific stuff, how hard a doctors life is and also that if your mother didn’t manage to sleep with your boss, then chances are, you’ll get left behind. Stupid woman should have just drowned in Season 2.

the sound of settling

So I was having a conversation with a friend the other day and the topic diverted to “settling”.

He is of the opinion that the older people get, the more likely they are to settle for someone who is remotely compatible to them, and thus embark on the serious relationship journey that eventually leads to marriage. Because marriage is not something people want, it’s a societal compromise.

Ugh.
As you can imagine, my initial reaction to this was disgust at his lack of enthusiasm about Love. People don’t settle, I said, they fall in love, they meet ‘the one’… if people settled then how do you explain the whole ‘I married my soul mate’ statement.

‘It’s a lie’, he said poker-faced. ‘You make your own soul mate. It’s a mixture of compromise and perception.’

And that got me thinking. I conceded, begrudgingly so of course. He was completely right.

Yes, it’s a damn cynical way to look at life, right? But it’s also a freaking realistic one. It makes you rethink the whole concept of love, or whether a concept like that even exists. It makes you wonder: Is there such a thing as a soul mate or love at first sight. Or are they all just gooey, lovey-dovey words for compromise and settling?
Is it like: You’ve always liked fried eggs before you met him, he likes scrambled. Suddenly you wake up thinking, hey, scrambled is not half bad
Or: You love sleeping with the air-conditioner on, but he likes the fan. Hey, he’ll just buy a thicker blanket.

Nope, sadly, if one is to go by this theory you’re not being a good girl/boy friend; you’re being a sniffling fool who is petrified of ending up alone and living with cats!

On the other hand, the positive, head-in-the-clouds, all-is-full-of-love hand, love is wonderful and the feeling you get when you know you’re loved is even better.

So what if everyone else thinks you have cotton candy for a brain.