Defeatism and Non-Drinkers

The quote I just posted bears repeating again:

Cynicism harnessed to your advantage can help debunk fraudulent mysteries that prevent us from sharing in what is possible and what is ours.

Or, to put it another way, it's cynical to try to destroy magic in this world. However, if it's something that people claim is magical but isn't, and the fact that people claim it's magical is keeping you from doing it, well, that's something that we all should be cynical about.

There are a lot of things like that, things that have a bad reputation but can be harnessed to your advantage. Like defeatism. Sometimes dreams come true just by dreaming them hard enough. (There's another idea deserving some serious cynicism.) Sometimes dreams come true through hard work. And sometimes dreams just aren't going to come true and all you're going to do is waste your time and build frustration.

Defeatism, as deployed here, is the obverse of cynicism. It's defeatist to assume that something isn't going to work before you've tried as hard as you possibly can. However, if it is wildly improbable that your effort would amount to anything, then defeatism is a good thing.

Somebody is going to be center fielder for the Cards. That person is probably not going to be you. Unless you're unbelievably talented, if this is your dream, you would be well advised to abandon it at your earliest convenience. Have you considered going into plumbing?

I mention all this because something occurred to me that caused a wave of defeatism to sweep over me. And I also think it's a good thing.

Most of you are not aware of this fact, but as you all know, I don't drink. That's not the thing that occurred to me. What did occur to me -- and I don't know how it could possibly have taken me this long to figure this out -- is this:

People who drink don't want to date people who don't drink.

Not all of them. There are people who don't drink and don't mind someone who doesn't drink. There are also straight men who like show tunes. This does not mean that going to see Rent to pick up guys is a good idea.

My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that roughly 85% of all women in St. Louis drink. If we limit ourselves to Catholic women (for whatever reason), that number rises to about 97%. Which is to say, I'm sure somewhere out there are people who don't drink, but I don't know who they are, and I don't think I've met any of them. Except one time, although she turned out to be one of those Pentecostal snake-handlers, so she doesn't count.

So, that's my bit of good defeatism. I'm giving up on at least 85% of all women here in the STL. The thing that would make this a bad thing is what I did about it. If I said "Oh, woe is me! I'm giving up on all those people! I don't even know if these non-drinking folk actually exist! Boo freakin' hoo!"

Instead, I'm going to use this defeatism to focus on what might actually work for a change.