The Jigsaw of Being Single
Every year when certain holidays come around, I have this need to be in a relationship. As someone who has somehow always been single on Valentine’s Day, I have come to dread the holiday. Valentine’s day is annoying when you are single. Yet, there are many underlying questions to this dread like do I want to be in a relationship or am I just wanting someone to buy me flowers? Probably both, but this then spirals to another question: why do I want a relationship? Now there are many answers to this question, but when I was scrolling through TikTok, I found an eye-opening answer. The TikTok was of a girl asking for advice on how to be happy single. Another girl duetted the TikTok advising her to watch the second episode of Daniel Sloss’ Live Show series titled “Jigsaw” and to skip thirty minutes into the show. So, naturally, I watched this segment and now I can report to you all the tea on why being single is a vibe.
The segment starts with a young Daniel inquiring about the meaning of life with his father. The father explains life using a metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle saying that every person in life is a jigsaw puzzle, but there is no box or picture to reference. Further meaning that no one in life knows what they’re doing, but everyone uses factors like friends, family, interests and careers to put the pieces together. Yet, there is a catch, to complete the puzzle you need a partner to fill the rest of the empty space. This is an interesting metaphor, but Daniel demolishes this idea. Daniel says the big problem of everyone’s lives is that we have been conditioned to be in love with the idea of love by society. Now this leads to the bigger picture that he says because of this, we rather be with someone than by ourselves and we are so desperate to be in love that we might change ourselves just to fill a void. Daniel even includes a line saying, “we are incapable of loving ourselves, so we employ someone else to do it.” Although a little bit extreme, I tend to agree with his points. Daniel got me thinking, there are so many ways to experience love that maybe we should stop prioritizing romantic love. Love can be seen and expressed at any moment and I don’t think that I realize that enough.
So, maybe I don’t want a relationship after all. I might just want someone to be obsessed with me. Also, I think in life we may have based some of our worth on how many men think we are attractive, which shouldn’t be the case at all. A man’s opinion should not affect our own self-worth. Honestly, maybe the best course of action is to invest our time into ourselves and outgrowing insecurities instead of getting into relationships where the cons outweigh the pros. Maybe even this year I might spend Valentine’s Day focused on me instead of other scenarios.
And I couldn’t help but wonder: Is self-love the only love we need?