No more Mr Nice Stimbo?

[Angrboda]

I should have said this at the time, but better late than never. I think Rumi is out to lunch here. I think he's taken the common dating advice of "try not to look desperate" and tried to elevate it to some grandiose statement. Love and friendship, like any valuable thing you may desire, is most profitably achieved by those who move with purpose, direction, and energy. Certainly, avoid excesses and neurotic behaviors, but there's nothing more healthy than seeking the love you need, and it can be damn sexy, too. It's said that good things come to those who wait, but in love, I think the only thing that comes to those who wait is some kind of fungal infection. People who are lovable, fun, and desirable will still be so even if they are actively looking (or, more realistically, putting themselves in places where they will see and be seen). Nobody likes a desperate, clingy, codependent neurotic, but nothing about the mere act of seeking love causes you to become that. And let's face it, unless one of you is moving with energy and purpose, nothing will ever happen. I sense a typically sexist undercurrent in Rumi's ruminations here, that he, being a desirable man, should simply benefit from them (women), coming to him; if he were to meet someone he likes, would he actually counsel himself to "stand there and hope that it 'just happens'." Bollocks. Certainly don't become a neurotic who is doing things you don't enjoy simply for the sake of increasing your odds, but there is plenty of room on that fitness landscape to move from a position where you are available, happy, but not likely to have opportunities for love and friendship, and parts of the living phase space with those same qualities except your odds of being able to make or have another make something happen are higher.

(I haven't read enough Rumi or about him to place him in terms of cultural stereotypes and what not, so I may be misreading the cultural component of his advice. What little I've read of Rumi I've liked, but I've read rather little.)