The Luv Doc: Attitude is Everything

Dear Luv Doc,

Since shortly after the pandemic began, my single friends have all been telling me how lucky I am to be in a relationship. I always shrugged it off and would say things like, "It's not all wine and roses" or, "At least you don't have to lock yourself in the bathroom to get some alone time." Now, after four months of living in close quarters with my boyfriend in a tiny Downtown apartment, I think I can safely say this relationship is not going to last. There is nothing I crave more than to be in the bedroom doing a Zoom happy hour with my friends, or going for a run, or taking a long shower, or going to Whole Foods to buy groceries. I am not an introvert or a recluse. In fact I am quite the opposite. I just don't look forward to spending even more time with my boyfriend, and I can't imagine spending the rest of my life with him. He gets on my nerves in ways I would have never imagined. All he wants to do is play video games and argue about politics with people on Facebook. He barely exercises anymore, and he usually sleeps in until 10:30 or 11. I ask him how his job is going and he just says "Fine" even though I rarely see him working. He never comes up with ideas about what to make for dinner other than getting takeout and even then it's usually fast food. It's just the same thing day in and day out – like Groundhog Day but not nearly as fun or funny. It's actually depressing. Is this what my life has come to, or am I just losing my sense of perspective?

– The Mayor of Punxatawney

Anytime I get to talk about Groundhog Day is a good day for me. It's truly one of my favorite movies, even though it could probably use some more gratuitous nudity, profanity, gunplay, and explosions. Maybe someday someone will make a cinematic mashup of Groundhog Day and Scarface and the world will be the richer for it.

I know I am not telling you anything new, but at its core Groundhog Day wrestles with the concept of eternal recurrence, the idea that the universe and everything in it does not evolve in a linear fashion but is actually cyclical, recurring again and again in an identical fashion an infinite number of times.

The concept goes back to at least Pythagoras, a noted Roman philosopher, mathematician, and vegetarian, otherwise famous for the Pythagorean theorem, which is pretty much a bedrock of middle school geometry and a gateway to higher maths. He also cooked up the mathematical basis for the eight-note harmonic scale that most modern music is based on – which, as fate(?) would have it, repeats itself. Pythagoras was far from the only person to kick the tires on the notion of eternal recurrence, but he probably has the best academic résumé.

Existential heavyweight Fred Nietzsche gets a lot of cred for his reboot of eternal recurrence, and rightfully so. His dark, overly dramatic Wagnerian prose lends extra gravity to the fundamentally trite platitude at the crux of eternal recurrence: Attitude is everything! It could well be that the "demon that steals after you in your loneliest loneliness" is Tony Robbins and his bright, dental veneers.

So you have this life, this moment, this circumstance, and you can either seize the opportunity to make the most of it or you can sit around whining about how much better it could be. I mean this on a personal level. Your boyfriend is unimaginative? So what. Use your own noodle and concoct a life with or without him that is the absolute best you can summon with your existing resources. Become a world-class chef. Learn to paint like Renoir or dance like Ginger Rogers. Challenge yourself to wake up every day and become a better you. At worst, you will be happily engaged and at best you will be an inspiration. The challenge is exactly the same every waking day of your life.