Enough With The Good Enough

It seems to come up every now and then, someone not being good enough for someone else.

Sometimes it is you, thinking you are not worthy enough to be with a particular someone you are interested in (or are already dating). Sometimes it is the other person, who tells you that they are not good enough for you to be with (but in turn treats you like you are not good enough). Sometimes it is people around you, who seem to have all sorts of opinions about a particular couple, deciding which one in the pair is more worthy, more deserving.

I am not certain how, but it almost always seems to come up, someone not being good enough for someone else. So let’s just take a moment here and ask the most important question. What does “good enough” even mean, really?

We, the extremely intelligent race that we are, like to place a couple beside each other and rank them on a list of attributes and qualifications that we deem superior. The individual who has more points checked off the list wins the contest. Simple, right?

Well, actually it isn’t. Because unlike what reality TV seems to portray these days, falling in love and making a relationship work is not a contest. So yes, you may have travelled the world more than a certain someone or you may have gotten a higher educational degree, but as William Shakespeare so eloquently wrote, “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

When I told my mother that my 28-year-old friend wasn’t married, she replied saying “She’s a doctor. She should be able to find someone.”

“Sure,” I replied “I am certain that makes her more worthy of being loved.”

So let’s get something straight. Yes, certain people may be more qualified than their counterparts. And yes, certain people may popularly be called the more attractive of the two. But that does NOT for a moment mean that they are ‘better’, ‘superior’, or ‘more worthy’ of being loved.

And it sure as hell does not mean that anyone not possessing those attributes or qualifications owes them love.

It is said that we accept the love we think we deserve. Here is what you need to know about that phrase. Everyone deserves love. I’ll rephrase that. Everyone is worthy of being loved by absolutely anyone. So remember that love is not a person who earns as much as another, or has the same aquiline nose and pencil thin lips to match each other. Love is an incredible gift granted to our foolish race, an entity begat before time itself that we simply catch glimpses of every now and again in each other.

Sure, not everyone will love you and you will not love everyone back who does love you, but that has nothing to do with anyone being, as the phrase goes, ‘good enough for someone’. In fact, the truth is that it pretty much means nothing (yes, sometimes things mean absolutely nothing!). Simple, right?

Actually, it is.

And if anyone tells you or makes you feel otherwise, you should know better than to believe that.