When the Time is Ripe

A few posts ago I put up a few paragraphs from Ernest Hemingway's short story, Soldier's Home. I would now like to re-post the final paragraph referenced and expound on another idea that at the time had escaped my notice.

...You did not need a girl unless you thought about them. He learned that in the army. Then sooner or later you always got one. When you were really ripe for a girl you always got one. You did not have to think about it. Sooner or later it would come. He had learned that in the army.

We've already discussed the need of women in my earlier post and will not delve into that again, at least not too in depth. Women are necessary but not, I believe, to the degree in which the media tries to make us think they are necessary. We can, after all, survive without them. Not, of course, as a whole, but certainly individually and we are forced, of course, to do so temporarily. I am not addressing the issue of motherhood or things like that. I am addressing the true need of women once a women is wholly one's own. Wholly.

We are today under the delusion that we must have women. That we must have them all the time but above all right now. This is not desperation, it is a delusion. As a victim of loneliness I have often turned my attention (thereby also my affections) to the thought of women. I suspect that at times I have let my own imagination run far ahead of me. But I always covered my tracks by my own malady - loneliness.

God on the other hand has a plan. He has the perfect girl for every one. Ouch. Actually that's a whole other area of debate and one which I am not about to address. In fact I am not even fully sure I agree with the recent declaration I've just made. Oh well, leave it for now. The point is God does have a plan. He is in control.

It is not up to us to get desperate. It is not up to us to go on the rampage and sleep all over town or steal as many hearts as possible. No. It is, I believe, up to us to be on a sort of search. Not to be mistaken with the idea of a hunt. We are not predators. Nor is it a medieval conquest with heroic rites of passage. It is a search. Not passive, yet not aggressive either.

Quite frankly I agree with Hemingway. There will come a time, and it will be in God's timing, when we will be "ripe" for a girl and that is when we will get one. The same thing goes, of course, for women. Women will, when the time is ripe, get their man.