Words can have a great and heavy meaning. To one person. To everyone. Once upon a time I heard the phrase A word is a promise. That story didn’t live happily every after because now a word is just a petty item composed of lifeless letters, and those letters are composed of lines scratched together.
I can’t say that everyone takes a word personally. I can’t even say that some people do. But I can say that I do. I always have. And that is what has made my life difficult. But that is also what has made my life. What has made me who I am, how I think, why I feel, why I do what I do. A man’s innocent smile can be a word. A man’s guilty smile is a word. A breathless goodbye becomes my breath in the hands of the one who took the goodbye.
It is a pointless mission to expect the world to change its ways, let alone its words. And after all these years I can’t change my own ways or words. But maybe I don’t want to either. Because even though a simple word can lead me to weeks of sleepless nights, torturous mind wars, and unending dreams, I can’t allow myself to change my foundation. My fountain of youth—fountain of life. It may be the cause of my demise, my heartbreaks, and my tears, but the fact that it creates such reactions proves my humanness. And that is one of my favorite qualities about me. If I didn’t feel something to the extent that I do, I wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t be this strange species that stands out even if I do nothing. The one that feels and thinks and believes differently than the rest of the population.
People have their expectations of how I am to change and what the proper standards of living are, but whoever said that was way to be? Expectations create their own set of problems—especially because they are to one person, entirely different than they are to another. And the expectations about love, about the relationships between men and women, about feelings and emotions, are a problem on their own.
“Girls these days are unbelievable with their expectations.” She sipped her Turkish coffee so arrogantly with her legs crossed and her tone super confident. I watched from afar to hear the rest of what she had to say, to see why another old lady had to bash the remainder of females. I knew she most likely had more sons than daughters and heard their complaints. “They won’t accept a man unless he has three keys.”
I was intrigued and so I sat back and waited to hear this new 3-Key philosophy women were following these days. “In my days, we took a man understanding and accepting the fact that he was to start his life and success from scratch. From zero. Now women refuse it. They want a man with a car key, a house key and an office key. What kind of mentality is that?!?!” She was clearly angry and I had to hide my laughter. I held back against my will to snap back and give her my two cents. After all, I was just the innocent granddaughter coincidentally sitting in the corner of the room with all of my grandmother’s friends. But I had the script in my hand, ready to recite.
How on earth were those great expectations? Why were they too much these days? I wanted to tell her, that in her times, women married between the ages of 17 and 22. The man anywhere from 23 and 33. Of course he had nothing. She was lucky if she didn’t share a room with her mother in law. But times had changed, drastically. Women these days were marrying after 23 and so the men were older as well. And with age comes the sensible expectation for maturity. Not mental maturity because we have given up on that one with the men. But financial maturity. Goal setting maturity. And those include the three keys. On top of that, women are also getting their education, unlike the expectations of the past. And so now the woman has a Master’s degree, has a job, has success, and expects that her partner does too.
Let me review these keys and explain to all those old ladies out there why they are sensible orders to ask of a suitor. Key #1: Car. Okay, if we lived in New York City, I could understand the absence of a car key. But even then, it is sensible to own one for trips and necessities and transportation. If a man cannot afford a car, I don’t see how he can afford a full on marriage. I guess if he can manage it, kudos? Key #2: House/Apt. Now a car, we let slide if NYC was the living standards. But if he came to my door without a key to open the door of our future housing (or at least the ability to purchase one after the engagement) I have no idea why I would open the door for him in the first place. He expects us to take the subway or the taxi to get around, but where do we sleep, wake up, eat, LIVE? There is nothing overreaching here.
The last key—office. She may have taken this one a little too literally, but speaking for myself and for the many girls that I know, none of us expect to marry the CEO or VP of any large corporation who would own the key to the building. The only people I know who own those keys are the security guards. But we do expect a man to have a metaphorical key symbolizing the stability of his well-earned job. The one that will support him as well as the family he wants.
Great expectations? I think not. Times have changed a lot and now women own those three keys. And because 99% of men prefer to be better than women, they have to beat those standards as well. We are just letting them know what to have and prepare before getting on one knee, just so that down the line they don’t retaliate and find themselves in a jealous predicament, where the women has more success and money. Unfortunately, that is almost every man’s nightmare.
Those three words, car, house, office, carried a heavy meaning to this woman and her son. As well as to those other older ladies that sat in our living room. The same way other innocent words carry heavy meanings to my heart. To some they are sensible. To others they are far from it. But everything has another side to it, an explanation, a breakdown that can ease the accepting process. I only wish there was someone who could see the other side of my heart and break down the word intake process and illustrate the simplicity of letting go, the same way I have for the 3-Key Philosophy.
I need a fourth key and I don’t believe that it is too much to ask. But after all the wild emotions I rode I’ve decided that I need to lock my heart. To keep away those who want to break in instead of knocking. And when I find that man with the fourth key, the one that unlocks my heart and all its twisted beats, I think he will be the one who deserves to live in it. And that expectation is the greatest of all.
