Did Facebook form out of unrequited love?

I recently saw the film The Social Network and it’s been playing on me ever since.

According to the film version of events, CEO Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook on the back of a bad breakup.

I can relate to being spurred on to create or do something meaningful after such a heavy emotional hit. Finding that creative space helps lift me out of the doldrums and get me back on track to reassuming my identity as a solo rather than part of a couple. Even if it's to prove this to myself alone.

In The Social Network’s opening scene, we watch as the character Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend are talking in a bar. Tension builds in the conversation and finally Mark’s girlfriend has had enough. He clearly doesn’t want her to end the relationship but it’s too late, she wants out and Mark’s left with little choice. He’s been dumped.

And so the story begins and now....we have Facebook.

As the film closes, Mark is on his own, contemplative, and we watch him at his laptop search for a profile name on Facebook. He taps in his ex girlfriend’s name and up pops a picture of a beautiful, young woman. It’s her.

Mark is tentative to sending her a ‘friend request’ but after a moment of hesitation we watch him click ‘send’. Every few moments he refreshes the screen. Is she online? Has she accepted his friend request?

This moment makes my heart swell. It reveals two things that are very real.

1. Money can’t buy love; and
2. It can be excruciatingly hard to halt a yearning heart.

Even for Mark Zuckerberg – the world’s youngest billionaire who arguably by society’s standards has it all. This closing scene suggests to me that he’d happily let it all go to win back the girl money can’t buy.

Under our skin

If you will permit me to have a Carrie Bradshaw moment - I have been thinking of the beauty within pain. Pain of heartbreak that is.

Looking back at lost love it’s easy to slip into the romantic delusion that your heart belongs to your lost love and the fact it is no longer there, brings about a feeling of loss so profound the pain is palpable.

To be denied the connection you had with someone - a love and lust that can no longer feed in the physical realm - is to find yourself in a world of solitude, of aloneness that leaves us in a state that is nothing less than aching.

But interesting it is - this state of melancholy can also be tantalising, consuming and addictive. The state of mind that allows itself to be lost to and idealise the past is an escape from reality, the now, the present, where we are and where we need to journey.

It's the elixir of anaesthesia.

Sure our (now ex) boyfriends may have been the best thing since sliced bread but the universe paves its way in unforseen territories and if she forces us to part - it is essential we honour this and accept the inevitability our step is to build a new life sans Don Juan.

Find our own feet and tread the next gradient solo.

Until the future man of our dreams falls in our lap, it's our romantic connection to the nostalgia of the past that keeps lost loves at the forefront of our minds and in our present.

Ready made families

I've read that where we are in life is where we have chosen to be.

I've also subscribed to the words from the poem "Desiderata" by Max Ehrman ever since they came to my attention when a trader cited them in his weekly newsletter after the stock market crashed in 2007 (and my share portfolio with it).

"You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

I've also taken solace in: "you never forget the ones you've loved" from the French film, Apres Vous, when missing the boys I've said goodbye.

When the chips are down, it's in these trinkets of wisdom that I'll often lean.

And then there's children.

I would love to be a mother and often beat myself up about not having children. But in reverting to my opening line, it has had to have been my choice.

My maternal instinct is there - the relationship is not.

The answer? Play surrogate.

Two friends of mine, both mothers with three, are employing me as their babysitter.

It has brought a whole new lease of life! I role play mum, and my friends take their breather. Win win.

I'm practicing motherhood.

I've been a pet owner for 16 years - ask any committed pet owner, they will confirm, the pet is our fur child.

But there's something to be said for being a part of your friend's family. You love your friends, you (usually) love their kids. And when six year old Willy says: "I love you Cazi", it makes me melt.