I couldn’t even guess how many quotes I read on my Instagram feed about not settling. I’ve seen countless listicles shared on my Facebook timeline with ways to prevent yourself from settling. These days it seems like everyone is telling us that we need to keep striving. Striving for the perfect love or the perfect job or even the perfect bowl of bolognese, for god’s sake. People are obsessed with the idea of not “settling.” But what even is settling? The quotes, articles and lists I mentioned above sell settling as a bad thing. It’s described as if settling on something means you’ve given up. You’ve stopped working and pushing. Or you don’t think you deserve anything else. Hearing these versions of settling will do one of two things: it will motivate you to strive for what you really want, or it will cause you to feel like a failure. For me, it’s often the later. Settling can be described another way, though, and it’s often overlooked. Think about a dog doing circles in his
Posts
When Michael Scott was making everyone cringe and giggle in 2005, I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to show The Office . It wasn’t until I re-watched it at 27 years old that I realized how many lessons it was teaching me. This show is somehow constantly relevant. It’s been off-air for a couple of years, but the memes and Tweets about it are still constant. People are always re-binging it. That’s the sign of a great sitcom. The comedy has taught me more about love - and all the different versions of love - than any other form of media in my life. While Pam and Jim are a big part of it, I even learned from Dunder Mifflin’s hilariously-inappropriate manager. But we’ll start with the obvious… 1. Friendship first Pam and Jim have a love story that started out as a friendship and there’s no better way to fall in love. Falling for someone who is honestly your best friend is scary, exciting and just downright weird. It comes with a lot of risks, but if it works, it’s th