Clone Wars

"Well, of course in order to get married one should be in a certain weight range." 

"In order to get married, one should have a certain career." 

"The only way to get married is to dress a certain way." 

Ma snorted. "I'm the last person who could be accused of being a romantic, but the conversation nowadays is ridiculous. Marriage is now a formula." 

True that.

"Men only like girls with straight hair." 

"Women only like men with square jaws." 

Generalizations abound as individuals are carefully placed into boxes, based on their gender, religious affiliation, and hair color. Following these shallow qualifications, we then lead into: 

"The reason you are single is because you are picky," said the person who doesn't know me from a hole in the wall.

When did we become a blank army of clone stormtroopers? 

Melanie Notkin wrote of society's need to blame the singleton. She expresses well the theories people invent for her single state, but concludes, "You don't know what I'm thinking." You don't know who I am, or what I'm looking for.

"If someone is sick," my ill relative noted, "then it came from Hashem. If someone is single, then someone has to be blamed."

While we have a "crisis" for everything, we never say we have an "illness crisis," do we? People do get diagnosed regularly, but even if they didn't take care of themselves, or made bad health choices, we don't whip out the censure. We simply offer support.

Let us hold back the sharp retorts, the snap judgments, or smug satisfaction, and see and hear and recognize the individual.