tina30072020

It’s a really, really hot day. You have been walking in the city but you feel like walking in the desert. People walking in every direction, horns honking, taxi drivers shouting, kids crying and begging for ice cream; all hell breaking loose, simply put. All this in weather hot enough to boil water in the sun, and you don’t have even a bottle of water with you – nor money on you to buy one.

The place seems like an enormous Turkish bath and you’re sweating like crazy. Suddenly, the world starts trembling, you fall down and everything seems to shut down for a moment. As you’re lying on the pavement, you see a plastic bottle of water. Or at least it seemed as much. You try to grab it, but as soon as you touch it, it starts levitating and dancing in the air, a blue smoky creature popping out of it.

“Master, master, you set me free! After five hundred years of loneliness, I’m back to the world of the living!”

“Oh boy! I must be hallucinating. Are you a smurf or what dude?”

“Smurf? You are insulting me, I am a mother***king genie! And for that, you shall be punished. Not only will you not have three wishes, but one – and that with conditions. Are you ready to hear your choices?”

“Damn you genie, but water first”. He hands me the bottle, smirking.

“It’s not going to happen soon –or maybe not at all– but let’s speak hypothetically. Say you find the perfect Significant Other. Which out of the two would you prefer? Option number one: Pure, undeniable love – but no gifts, no birthdays, anniversaries; at all. Or option two: a rather hypocritical relationship but a 50-shades-of-grayish behavior and you literally drowning in gifts and jewelry?”

If this is not a dilemma, then what is? Of course, one would choose love without any hesitation, but they would for sure be skeptical about it afterward. Because even a perfect relationship becomes tiring with no expectation of giving at all.

Call me a material girl, but all of us may become jealous after seeing all our friends receiving birthday gifts from their partner. And let’s not even talk about Christmas. It’s especially then when you wonder why you didn’t receive anything, even though you’ve been nice for the whole year.

We all need to be spoiled and we feel neglected if someone doesn’t pay the needed attention. Sometimes, let’s not kid ourselves, that attention is translated into material things. The price of the gift given doesn’t necessarily matter, but it’s the action itself that makes us happy.

Needless to talk about remembering important dates. It’s not going to save a relationship, but it shows that someone is there –body, heart, and mind– and actually cares.

On the contrary, who would want someone who remembers every single anniversary, doesn’t forget to buy gifts and showers you with whatever money can buy; but is a literal jerk? I guess nobody.

Whatever shines is not gold and especially not superficial people who tend to be correct only for show-off purposes. It’s all a matter of what you can live with; a true but “poor” love or a “love that is “rich” in everything but what love should be?

So if you stumbled upon a genie, what would you choose?

Author: Tina Barbatsalou

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