Dating, Career Choices, and Personal Defects

Different jobs attract different kinds of flawed specimens of humanity. We are all flawed, of course, beset with our own neuroses, but we flock together according to certain interests. For example, I used to work in the non-profit sector which attracts people with more passion than sense.  The result is waste and constantly conflicting arguments about values and justice.  There is conflict, high highs, low lows, screaming, crying, and every emotion in between.  People attracted to non-profit work love to feel their emotions.  

I now work in an environment where my particular neurosis are more at home: the library.  Librarians love order and hate conflict.  They value knowledge, eschew confrontation and, for most, overt competition.  This produces an atmosphere of passive-aggresiveness and back-biting where people snipe at others reputations, act polite to one another in person, but oppose and obstruct in secret.

You can tell a lot about a person by the job they choose (not necessarily by what job they are doing, but what job they would choose).  This should be considered in dating, because i come to realize that the important thing in dating is not to find the person whose positive traits are your ideals, but rather, find the person who does NOT have the flaws you cannot stand.  You can learn to live with anything else and learn to love.  

I think the trick in life is first of all: Never give up. A person can change and grow for the better, but it takes time and lots of it; second: recognize that things will never be perfect, ever! The trick is to learn what you absolutely cannot stand and learn to love the rest. It works for dating as well. When dating a person, figure out if they have anything you could not tolerate under any circumstances. If they don't, you can learn to love the rest.