Ovid's advice

The woman who wrote a book about wishing her way into a relationship spent a lot of time waiting. Somehow she must have known her beloved would show up one day, because sure enough he did, literally turning up on her stoop after reading something she’d published.

But searching connotes action. And now that I’ve turned my back on the online world, I have to figure out what to do next. A friend in D.C. is going out with a woman he met in a bar. But he’s in his twenties. He went there with a bunch of friends. Do I really want to meet a man who picks up single women in a bar? Even more to the point, do I want to be that woman?

My friend Anne suggested I start attending lectures at the Council on Global Affairs with the idea that the men in attendance would at least be fairly smart.

My preference would be to simply meet someone through work. As a journalist, I’m always encountering new men. In the last few weeks alone, I’ve met at least a dozen. The problem is that my latest article has to do with the Catholic Church. Everyone I’ve talked to is either a priest or a former priest, who is now married. How the latter met their wives, god only knows. Surely they couldn’t have been looking, yet it happened, like a miracle.

In Anatomy of Love, author Helen Fisher suggests that love is triggered by smell. That we all have “odor prints” which somehow attract our beloved toward us. I suppose I could turn this bit of info into a plan of action by dumping my lavender-scented deodorant and letting my natural perfume exude. But I wonder if I dare.

Nope, I think this weekend I’m going to go with Door # 5 and follow the Latin poet Ovid’s advice: “To love, be loveable.” It’s active, ripe with possibility, and best of all means I can just kick back and do nothing special except be me.