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I could be wrong, but I've always thought the intent behind that statement was to say that people can get SO focused on a goal that they miss other opportunities around them.
This.
You have to put some effort in to ANYTHING you want or want to happen, that's common sense.
The starment isn't meant to tell you to stop "looking" it's telling you to stop putting so much focus towards it and not allow it to encompass or overtake your direction in life.
For the first 25-ish years of my life I didn't try. Nothing came to me. Then after trying really hard (or so I thought) for a few years (strictly OLD), I finally found someone.
That relationship has since ended and after some time to myself, I feel ready to find it again. I've been trying pretty hard again for a few months (I know that's not THAT long) but I still feel like I'm getting nowhere.
Friends have told me to just stop. Especially the online dating, which I'm finding frustrating and a waste of my time. But I literally have never met anyone any other way. They say that when I just stop, I'll find someone.
It's never worked for me before, why would it work now?
It seems I can't really say it has worked for me because I've never actively tried to look for someone. Yet the two long-term relationships I've had had has always come for me when I wasn't really wanting too much a relationship at that time. The first when I had recently gotten out of a relationship, just gotten over it and was finally enjoying being by myself at the time. The second was when I had just moved from the western part of the country to the eastern part of the country. I had been wanting a relationship for a little while, only back out west I knew I didn't want to start one there because I wouldn't be staying there for long; then when I moved here, the job I moved here for turned out to be an unstable one and it was just a real bad time for a relationship to begin since things were kind of chaotic for a while.
So I guess for me the relationships have historically come at a time when I really didn't need or want one too much or when it really just wasn't a good time for one. Seems like it would be different for everyone. Since it worked for you in the past, I wouldn't stop trying the online dating thing; I've heard good results from it. I think the stop trying to find someone and it will happen comes from how some people when they're looking seem to get a sense of desperation about them and other people pick up on that and it turns them off; when you stop looking you're (supposed to be anyway) content being on your own and somehow that sort of confidence draws people to you. Not saying that's going to work for everyone, but maybe it's worked out that way for some.
I could be wrong, but I've always thought the intent behind that statement was to say that people can get SO focused on a goal that they miss other opportunities around them.
I think above phrase I believe too. When too focused on one goal we miss many more with out even knowing we missed it,But shopping wise what you said always appeals to me OP like if I am looking for trousers I never find it,if I just window shopping and salary is not in I always find, but relationship wise I am quiet not sure. Look for good friendships may be that may guide to a good relationship. Good Luck OP
My co-worker was not "looking" at the time he found his gf. We were the one who kept trying to hook him up with someone, teasing him about it or actually throwing out names. He insisted that he will find her "organically" as he kept saying. He said he will just find her. Sure enough, he did. He started learning a 2nd language, joined meet-ups, a friend of the friend he met would join their hang-outs...well...few months later, he blurbed that they're official. Over a year later, he moved to another continent with her. He found her while not looking.
I have another friend, she has known the guy at a Singles for Christ meetings...they kept hanging out I guess, now they're together.
For some people, that statement holds true. It just mean you do your thing, focus on improving yourself or doing something you like and you'll find someone, somehow, through those. You won't know it's happening, because it'll progress naturally...not something you've intentionally initiated...if that made sense.
In my case after a recent approach didn't work for me I have stopped trying to date for the time being. I really don't care to be honest and I have better things to do than to approach women who have zero interest in me. It's like beating a dead horse. Maybe if I stop looking it'll happen and if it doesn't that's fine as well. I'm attracted to women but I don't need them either. Basically I'm gonna do my own thing and live my life but I would be perfectly content being single if I never meet a woman.
Oppenheimer was a notable Orientalist, with deep interest in Hindu theology. He was probably enamored of the idea that the proper life consists in working assiduously towards some abstract end, without expectation of reward or veneration, but for the thing in itself. Paradoxically, it is from such dedicated dispassion (an oxymoron?) that the accolades flow - and not because one covets them.
That's all eminently fine, but in the practical world, people have cravings and insecurities. Austere exhortations may give us goosebumps during a solitary bout of reading the classics in a comfy armchair, but they won't overcome our habits or emotional blocks. That, I think, requires actual life-experience; not theory.
"Zen" has been very popular in America in recent years, especially after Robert Pirsig's celebrated novel. But again I say: the theory is fine and noble, but its very austerity renders application problematic. As with so much in the genre of self-help, or what's been reduced (profaned?) to self-help, it's not hard to appreciate the precepts at an intellectual level; but to internalize them on an emotional level is something else entirely.
I think you got the gist of what I wanted to say in your first paragraph. Your second paragraph notes some "weakness of the flesh" issues that simply have to be overcome. One internalizes the Zen of the issue, not just giving it lip service, but actually internalizing it. Making one's mode of living more than adequate, as Oppie would say. Without conscious thought, ideally completely without conscious thought.
On and off, the Zen approach has worked for me. I would ride my cafe-style motorcycle down this curvy road where I grew up in my late teens, turns out there was a quite attractive gal who wanted to meet me, wanted to meet the guy on the bike, but I rode by too fast most days for her to come outside. One day I was off my pace for some reason, and met her. Nothing actually came of it, but I did meet an attractive gal by working on riding technique, and working on the bike itself. Still have the bike.
I could be wrong, but I've always thought the intent behind that statement was to say that people can get SO focused on a goal that they miss other opportunities around them.
This ^^. With the exception of my first (ended badly but that was still high school), every relationship I found were from "places" that I never thought to have looked with people I would have never expected. Yeh.. They weren't all perfect but I don't regret any of them.
In dating, You still have to participate. But go out with the intent of having fun rather than the intent to impress, find a relationship, etc.
Kinda OT but the same can be said with a lot of things in life. Pursue your passion but don't let it blind you to other opportunities and always ask yourself "to what extent are you going to pursue it."
We shall see. I am done looking. I have a list of what I want for my future and behaviors I will not except, so we shall see how it works out.
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