Apathy - sitting and waiting for love without exerting the effort to make it happen - just may be the number one cause of single woman loneliness.
Consider the robin.
Could she fly if she perched apathetically on a tree branch waiting for a favorable breeze? Not likely.
Robin knows that if she fails to flap her wings, an earlier bird is going to catch the worm.
So with a flick of her feathers, she's airborne.
We know a woman in Colorado who - after her husband's passing and a year of breakfast-for-one and supper with the six o'clock news - murmured a silent prayer as she walked in the cool mountain air: "Please, Lord, open my heart to a new love.
A few days later, her landlady rang her bell.
"A new man just moved in a couple of doors down from you.
Tall, kinda good-looking, and I'd say early 60s.
Keep your eyes open.
" Joyce did.
When she saw him head for the mailbox, she picked up her key and followed.
A 20-minute conversation led to other conversations.
"But," Joyce complained to her son-in-law a couple of months later, "this relationship isn't going anywhere.
I'm out of practice.
What do I do next?" "For heaven's sake," he declared, "this is the 21st century.
Invite him to dinner.
" But before she did, he did, and a few months later he asked a more serious question.
"My answer was yes," smiles Joyce, "and now only one of us has to go out for the mail.
" Joyce is a natural-born wing-flapper, but for some of us apathy is a malady difficult to overcome.
There were probably half a dozen women fantasizing about Victor as he passed their apartment windows that first week of his arrival on the scene.
Unlike Joyce, they were too timid, or too afraid of rejection, to flap their wings.