A long time ago, I matched with a boy on Tinder. We made the following deal: if I wrote him a song, we’d go for a walk on the beach. No sooner said than done. Three months later he dumped me with no explanation.
I don’t usually have any problems with losing contact; this was one of the exceptions. Not because I was particularly keen on the lad, but because the sudden end to our relationship was the hundredth time that I hadn’t managed to find my life partner.
Some young people find security in a relationship. Others never find someone to build up something stable. You then easily fall back on fleetingness for the sake of the fleetingness. You download the Tinder app and go out on average dates. Someone might sleep in your bed one night and then you later think: no, this actually isn’t the person I want to wake up with.
Where does that desire for fleetingness as a replacement for security come from? Perhaps it’s inherent to human nature; perhaps it’s personal, perhaps typical for my generation. I think the latter. We are the first to have lived their youth longer with the internet than without it. In that sense, we are the children of a kind of New Enlightenment.
The internet is in our lives every moment of the day, but its volatility has a destabilising effect. In this world which is constantly reinventing itself, it’s difficult to keep our feet. It’s even more difficult to tirelessly continue without someone occasionally telling you that it doesn’t matter whether you manage to achieve what you want.
Out of despair
Recently I realised that trust is the only solution for that problem. Trust offers security: at times when something we need isn’t there, trust that we’ll find it is the only thing we have to hold on to.
Out of despair, I decided to start believing in love again. The fact that I haven’t yet found a partner because I’m not looking in the right place is at least as plausible as being convinced that such a person doesn’t exist.
While researching the question whether Tinder might just be the right place, someone appeared with whom I’ve since been chatting. Who knows, this time I might have a song written for me.
