The Hazards of Love…

I’m going to keep this entry short tonight because my brain is in no order for some protracted discourse on the natures of the heart.  Rather, I wanted to share some statistics with you.

I had a great conversation with a friend over msn the other night.  It was one of those mythical late hour man conversations about relationships, women and feelings and stuff which few of ever care to admit really take place.  In it we discussed everything from our singleness [Humorous sidebar; I actually typed singletude until I stopped and thought about it] to loneliness to the concept of ‘the one.’  That last point, in particular has had me thinking a lot about relationships recently.

I was thinking tonight about that common phrase we all love to use when contemplating relationships; in particular their endings or indeed their lack thereof.

There’re plenty more fish in the sea…

It just kind of rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?  Tonight, however, I actually started to think about how many fish there really might be in the sea.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way naive enough to suggest that there is, in fact, any kind of scientific understanding which can be retrofitted onto our comprehension of love.  I have a friend who enjoys reminding me that love is nothing more than a chemical imbalance in our brains.  Call me an old romantic or whatever you want but I shudder at that notion.  Anyhow, this is beside the point.  Our notions of how scientific processes and our understanding of love do (or indeed do not) interact aside, there are some basic numbers which we can crunch to get closer to some estimation of just how many fish there are in that great big sea. 

Tonight I took a look at some general estimations of world demography, Northern Irish demography and world religious statistics.  I mean with all of the numbers I have flying about it does all come down to a little bit of estimation but nonetheless, it is interesting to see just how many fish we are talking about when we so idly use that phrase.

I mean, at the most basic level, if we start with the total population of the world which I’m taking as somewhere around 6,790,062,216 we can eliminate all the men leaving the female population of the world at in an and around

3,377,071,728

So after that we have to take age into account.  I was thinking about myself in this whole process and I’m 23 so I was thinking give or take a few years each way and lets find the percentage of the worlds population of females between the ages of 20 and 29

553,024,833

That done, I really did some guess-timating and eliminated about 4% for those of a homosexual persuasion

531,754,647

After figuring that out I had to whittle it down a little further.  I had to subtract anyone who doesn’t share my fundamental beliefs, that is to say my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  So I ended up with a figure indicating the number of straight female 20-29 year olds who profess a Christian belief (in 2001 it was estimated that roughly 1/3 of the worlds population was Christian)

175,479,033

I guess, however, there is a big difference between those who are nominally Christian and those who actually practice a belief in a way which would fit with my life.  For that reason I actually scrapped the previous figure and calculated the number of females who are estimated to have a practicing Evangelical faith (6.9%)

36,691,070

So I got to here and I was like, gee, that’s cool.  I don’t know what realm anyone would have to be in not to describe over 36 million women as plenty!  With that in mind, however, I thought that I’d focus the scale a little bit more, taking the process detailed above but using the 2001 Northern Ireland Census figures to find out what that number was on a more local level  

Total Population – 1,577,836

Female Population – 808,765

Female Population 20-29 – 126,976

Straight Female Population 20-29 – 122,092

Christian Straight Female Population 20-29 – 40,290

Evangelical Christian Straight Female Population 20-29 – 8424

Wow, 8424… 8424 fish in the sea.  Still, I guess its still plenty right?  Well it is, but I didn’t stop stop there.  In Northern Ireland, only about 49% of the population is single so you have to take that into account leaving

4,128

Still, over 4,000 women out there who are potentially a match is still a pretty high number.  So, I focused it in one last time.  Only 1.8% of the population of Northern Ireland live in proximity to me in the greater Ballymena area

74

Now, this is where the estimating gets really really dicey and probably into the realms of the un-quantitative but I heard somewhere that you also have to eliminate half of this final number for “intelligence, sense of humour, compatibility, ex-girlfriends and blood relatives.”

37

… and that’s it.  37.  37 fish in that big ol’ sea.  It kind of makes you think doesn’t it.  In my head I tried to remember back to the last time I was in town and how many people I passed in the local shopping centre.  Moreover I tried to think about how many potentially fitted into that age bracket.  It’s staggering.

I guess I should frame this all in it’s context as a kind of poignant conclusion.

The one?  I’m becoming more and more disenchanted with the idea of “the one…”

In the end, all of it, relationships, crushes, love, “the one…” whatever, it’s all meaningless…

What changes?  Nothing at all.  Sometimes you think you’ve found something good and then you end up with a few weeks of torment…

…or do you?  I mean yea, maybe that’s happened in the past, but don’t you look forward?  Don’t you look forward to the possibility that someday there will be someone who you truly find something special with?

I think to myself time and time again, yea, I like that girl, this could go somewhere and then it doesn’t…

… but at the same time, I like to believe it will. 

I like to believe that it will go somewhere, that we will make something of it, that I’ll find someone to share the rest of my life with and even when each one of those “likings” doesn’t pan out, I still have the hope that the next one will…

It’s true, I, like many others, hope to find that special someone someday.  I mean call it what you will; destiny, Divine ordination, “the one…” whatever term you use to describe your hope for a future relationship it all boils down to the same idea… That someday we’ll find some one special person to spend the rest of our lives with.

I guess it’s not that daunting a prospect when you think about about the six billion people on this earth; I mean surely someone, somewhere fits the bill right?  Well, when you start to think about it that little bit more literally and maybe frame it somehow in the context of the statistics above, maybe there aren’t actually that many fish to choose from in that wonderful sea we’re all so fond of mentioning. 

It could be true, however, that’s there’s another way we can look at all of this.  I was watching a T.V. show tonight in which one of the main characters said that the chance of one person finding their “the one” is like six billion to one and that you’d have better luck winning the lottery.  How much does this sentiment change, however, if we start to think a little more literally about finding our “the one” in that big sea of fish?  I mean its one thing to say that we have a six billion to one shot, but isn’t it something completely different to say we have a thirty seven to one shot?  You could say that those are much more favourable odds right?

Either way you spin this one, it’s all a bit overwhelming.

But I pulled you and I called you here,
And I caught you and I brought you here
These hazards of love, never more will trouble us.
And these hazards of love, never more will trouble us.

The Hazards of Love IIII – The Decemberists