How many frogs have you kissed?

It has been the third day of my company training on innovation from Monday. Being a marketer, we are always taught to get the right consumer insight, craft the brand vision and deliver 360-degree marketing campaign. Sometimes I wonder we actually spend more time to understand our consumers than to understand ourselves. If a good insight states the truth that changes the way we see the world, how well do you know the insight of yourself that changes the way you see who you truly are and what you truly want?

In the training yesterday, we were taught that having an innovation is like kissing frogs. Only by kissing the frogs, you know whether it turns to be a prince aka brilliant product. And most of the times, the frogs are just frogs. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know. This just gives me something to think: If our inner potential is the prince, how many frogs do we need to kiss to unlock that and live our dream? And does everyone have at least one prince ultimately? Or some of us are just born to have only frogs?

Since I was fifteen, I have been kissing a lot of frogs. My frogs include piano, guitar, French, Japanese, fashion design, graphic design, ice skating, wakeboarding, economics and now, marketing and writing. Most of them turn out to be just frogs. It starts off with anticipation and fantasy then eventually ends up with no where. Or maybe we just assume the prince will come right away once you kiss the right frog. But the truth, perhaps, is that you need to commit to kiss the frog in your lifetime to turn it to be a prince. Perhaps, we need to bet our time, hard work and hope into some frogs that we believe they can turn princes and lifetime success.

“Everyone seeks happiness, but we don’t always know what makes us happy, even if we think we do.” I learnt this from a random line in the training presentation yesterday. But really, we don’t know even if we think we do. All we can do is to take the chance, kiss the frogs, and finger cross.

One definition of relationship?

There have been talks with my friends lately on our definition of dates and relationship. I remember the time when things were simple with just black and white, or at least we thought there were just black and white. At that time, there were only single and in a relationship. But when we get to know more people and get our head smashed on the wall and heart broken on the floor, it turns out things aren’t that simple at all. There are very single, single, dating, lover, fuck buddy, in an open relationship, in an exclusive relationship, engaged, married, in love with an already-married, separate-bedroom, separate-living, in the middle of breakup, in the middle of divorce, divorced, and back to market again. I had a friend from work who had nine years of relationship with her boyfriend (and now husband) and is now happily married, saying, “For me, when a couple has gone through the kissing milestone, it goes directly to a relationship. What’s going on with all these new definitions? Am I being outdated or something?” This gives me something to think about: In terms of relationship, is ignorance a bliss?

Yesterday afternoon, I had a coffee with my guy friend, who is kind and sensitive enough to talk about relationship and friendship thing with me. We honestly confessed that sometimes, in some social circles, we just didn’t feel fit in. “When I went out with that group of friends, I did have laughter on random jokes. But at the end of the day, when I thought back what I have done in those hours, I recalled nothing and I didn’t particularly enjoy that.” For friends, we sure need more than a type. Friends to just go out with, friends to have nice and long talks, friends to bullshit with, friends to eat with, friends to shop with, friends to fuck with, friends to travel with, friends at work, friends at school, so on and so forth. For friends, it is a universal truth that everyone knows there will be more than one type. It is clear we can’t get fully satisfied by staying with only one type of friends especially when they are just the friends to have fun with. But for relationship, since when we expect there will be only one type? And since when we are programmed to have “the one”?

I have been questioned constantly from time to time, “Are you still single?” or “Did you find the one?” or my favorite, “How come you are not in a relationship?” I truly and sincerely bless the ones who are in a happy relationship or marriage now from the bottom of my heart and I do believe there is true love but sometimes, my dear friend, we have different dictionaries of relationship with different phrases and definitions. And in mine, single also means single and fabulous.

Label Slave

There is no better morning call than realizing your ex's relationship status secretly changed to "In a relationship" in facebook. In this very city, who isn’t really a label slave, no matter you are a slave for the big labels or a slave being labelled? With the help of Facebook, we can literally put a tag on your “friends” and on yourself. Yesterday morning I was just being labelled to be “professional connection” by a “friend” whom I met once in a random party. And we all know when’s the time you will have the most likes – from “single” to “in a relationship”, from “in a relationship” to “is engaged to”, or from “single” to “is married to”. To be honest, in these recent months, those relationship status bombs are as intense as in war field. I secretly thought, “Are people really “liking” it when they click the likes there? Or it’s more like thanks-for-labelling-yourself-out-of-the-market-and-I-know-now likes?” I looked at my luggage all covered by bumper stickers. I thought, “Are those labels so important for us that we need to tell everyone who we are like putting a bumper sticker on our forehead?”

Last night, I met my college friend whom I knew for years and have been putting an invisible sticker of “nice and traditional and conservative type” on his forehead. It happens when we label our friends as a conservative while putting yourself into the fun and crazy category who is looking for adventurous love, it turns out they are the ones having wild sex all over the place and you’re the one buying the true love story ad of Tiffany’s. Now what could possibly the bumper sticker my friends are putting on my forehead? Will this be “fun happy bird” or “uneasy arrogant bitch” or “desperate sad woman”? And how can we know our labels and does it really matter?

I saw a quote the other day. It says, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” I guess you can never manage to get the same bumper stickers people putting on you. But you can always look at the mirror and define the labels you want yourself to be.

And now in my head, I only have one bumper sticker: