The Groove Theory, revisited

You know, I really despise the whole notion of horoscopes and psycho-non-sense. It’s not necessarily because it’s wicked or of the devil, anybody can write bluntly vague but true statements like these whether possessed by evil forces, aliens, or an addiction to soda pop. My problem is that somebody’s getting paid a ton of money to write crap like my horoscope I read yesterday:

"Romantic relationships require genuine enthusiasm to be successful, and you can only put genuine enthusiasm into someone you really dig."

That’s so brilliantly obvious that I lost 10 IQ points and had to beat myself with a hammer as punishment. Seriously, that’s like saying “Work is hard so do something you enjoy for a living.” In a utopian society, we’d like to think that we’re smarter-than-the-average-bear enough to avoid investing time, effort, and energy into something that is completely pointless. Even writing the oh-so-unintelligent horoscopes still puts food on the table, so it has positives (the paycheck being the only one I can think of). But occasionally you’ve got to give in and do something that goes against the ultimate plan, hoping only that the time invested in pointless activity makes you mentally stronger to withstand the urge to give in to mediocrity again in the future.

It’s amazing to me how completely odd and random the human decision-making process is at times. Guys tend to ignore the obvious dangers of emotional pain and heartache in an effort to meet our inner physical need of reproduction, and gals ignore obvious logical hindrances of situations because of an emotional warm fuzzy feeling that hints at comfort and security. I’ve got an idea that would totally fix the problem, but as of yet, God hasn’t set up a website where we can go and download a daily agenda of things He wants us to do and people He wants us to see. As somebody once said, “If you’re forced to rest, a laurel’s as good a place to do it as any.” So, until the download-your-agenda website thing gets set up, we’re stuck pondering life’s difficulties in the public sphere and coming up with hypothetical answers to unsolvable problems.

Reviewing the notes from the academy, I think the sole purpose behind the development of the groove theory was the hypothetical answer to an unsolvable problem. While somewhat ambiguous and, dare I say obvious, the groove theory represents an honest attempt at making the decision to pursue or not to pursue more objective and empirical instead of a subjective gut call. Thus, you get a better idea of whether the pursuit of social happiness will be worth “genuine enthusiasm” or whether it will land you in the clutches of mediocrity (i.e. ending up with a lemon instead of a pineapple).

Even if you’ve landed in the vicious cycle of limbo, the groove theory offers hope of making the limbo rock (heh, punny). By taking the principles of the groove theory and putting them into practice, you should be able to figure out if the costs of time, effort, and energy in limbo are worth the potential benefits of a relationship with “someone you really dig.” You should be able to figure out how to put yourself in situations that market your strengths and downplay your weaknesses (because let’s face it, apples get pineapples because of their ability to market themselves) if your desire is to move out of limbo. While the whole notion of pickup lines is scorned and abandoned, the principle of them is highly applicable: the majority of the socially successful have a set routine that nets more profits than losses. Find your groove, embrace your groove, play your groove.

I want to be a horoscope interpreter. Equally as pointless, equally as profitable.