Caleb John Clark

It’s a beautiful thing when one lonely random thought happens to connect to

another lonely random thought. It’s a partnering of thoughts if you will.

After a chance meeting in your head, and after a series of dates, a

wonderful connection is found that you couldn’t have predicted. And when

this new partnership results in a third new thought being born, we have a

really beautiful new thing.

In this case the two thoughts were:

#1. Dating is like traveling,

#2. I wonder what is up with the people who travel in RVs, what drives them?

Two seemingly very separate ideas that somehow got together and formed a

new third thought. Here’s how this beautiful thing happened.

Thought #1: A date is like a small simulated travel experience. Call it

what you will, “just hanging out”, or “meeting”, we find ourselves at a

point in mating evolution that has through Darwinian evolution resulted in

a very efficient simulation of traveling.

Like traveling, dating is mostly about planning, picking up, spending money

doing something out in the world, dropping off. And like traveling, it’s

hard to keep anything private in the baggage you bring.

Why has a travel simulation risen to the top? Why don’t we simulate

partnership by doing what partners do together the most, like sleep? You

could pick someone up at 11pm and go back to your place and try and just go

to sleep together. That would be an interesting first date…

Dating must be explored further to see why it has become our way of finding

mates. Traveling is one of our most intense experiences that is also

relatively safe and accessible to most. Ever since we had to leave the cave

to hit the trail in search of food and water, we’ve known that traveling is

an intense human experience. That other intense experience, war, is after

all mostly traveling with huge amounts of baggage, spending huge amounts of

money, and waiting in uncomfortable conditions fantasizing about killing

your hosts and going home. Not unlike traveling home for Christmas.

Now, following this logic, we should ask potential mates if they’d like to

go to war to find out if we’re compatible in the shortest amount of time.

But for obvious reasons, we can’t do that. There are simply not as many

wars close by as movies, clubs, and cafes, and you could only date folks

who’d been through basic training.

Basic training. Hummm. If you think about it, this is not a bad idea.

“Dating basic training”, six weeks in the trenches with a drill sergeant

screaming, “Down and give me 20 funny stories!!!”. War games in loud clubs

to test communication skills in harsh environments, cafe endurance tests…

Dates also start with packing and preparing for an out of house experience

just like traveling. Before a date you must think of a wide variety of

situations you might be in. A coat? Hat for the sun? Shirt for later?

Protection in case? Money? ID? Address? What personal baggage to bring?

What to share? And what to try and keep packed?

Once on a date, driving is often the first experience. A true test,

driving. What kind of car? Do they tailgate? Speed? Get in fights? Use

blinkers? What kind of music? And all before getting to the first

destination.

Then there’s eating, a crucial activity. In one dinner out you can learn

volumes about someone. Their credit card situation, check, or cash? The tip

amount to gage generosity, etc. Then perhaps a movie, the test of silence.

Movies are also simulations of sleeping together as you recline in the dark

silently and close. After the movie, hidden baggage has often been flushed

out by the power of narrative into view for all to inspect as you walk out

of the theater in that post movie emotional state.

Like traveling, dating is ripe with the test of “What to do now?”. This is

a great life simulator for the decades that will come of having to answer

that question daily. Are they decisive? Controlling? Insensitive to other’s

needs or wants? Annoyingly neutral. Do you work well together in the

decision making process?

Dates almost always involves some test of the teams ability to function

effectively in life’s jungle. Bars, cafes, dancing, movies, games, it’s all

in the public, often on city streets. Do you fend off the sketchy bums

asking for money as a team? Or give deadly mixed messages that result in

lengthy discussions with crazy ranting freaks? Do you clash over who talks

first with the waiters? Does each have team leading skills that are used at

different times? Or is one person taking the lead all the time? Is there a

drinking problem that weakens the team? Drug issues?

Ending a date is just like ending a trip. The return to nest and the end of

having to be alert and the unpacking and undressing of things not always

used in normal life. But as you relax physically at home the mind continues

to travel, to crunch, process, justify, store, catalog, and generally

struggle to shape the experience. Not unlike after a date when you come

home and either rant to yourself, your roommates, or you cat about how the

date was.

We must ask ourselves then, if dating is simulated traveling, and if you

stop traveling once you’re partnered, is it because your relationship can’t

handle the pressure of traveling? Is it because you have a bad relationship?

Thought #2: What is up with those old couples endlessly bombing about in

those metal houses on the freeway?

Smack! The thoughts connect. Where once there was two, there is now three,

one having been born of the connection.

In this case the new born is the thought that the folks in RVs have great

relationships and are traveling in order to keep the relationship from

going stale by constantly going on one very long date. And therefore,

unlike we might think, the holy Grail of relationships just might be to end

up going 70 mph down the road in a metal house with a very small bathroom.

THE END