Life is Like Dating

  Office Building -Picture by Judith Hirst-Joyeux

A friend sent me an interesting email article about how a woman should go about choosing the "right" man. One line in the article provoked some serious thinking for me. The line is "Dating exists not for mating; it exists for collecting data." The important part of this quote, for me, was the "collecting data" idea. For, we do this all the time. We meet new people, people we may want to be friends with (aside from the whole mate hunting thing), and what is it that we do? We usually suggest going for coffee to talk or getting together - because we want to collect data to see if this person or couple or group of people is someone we want to spend time with in the rest of our lives.

I went for a job interview in 2000 when I was trying to decide what I wanted to do for the next ten years of my life. The interview took place in Minneapolis, and has stayed with me. I wanted to be very sure that the career move that I was making would be a good one. So, I had prepared quite a long list of questions about the company, the clients, and the business in general. The interview took place over a day since I needed to meet with and interview with five people. At the end of the day, the Director of Services that I would be working with, should I take the job, came back in to the room to debrief the day. He indicated that all interviews had been quite favourable. However, I had unnerved several people with all the questions that I had asked.

He said, "I feel like we are dating". I responded that I was carefully analyzing the information that was being asked, as well as what wasn't being asked because the working relationship would be a long one. Even in friendships and career, it is all about collecting data because you are, in a sense, setting up that "marriage" for an important part of your life. Don't be afraid to ask questions to get that information. The question that you don't ask may be the most important one.

May you find time to ask questions and be curious!

Judith