a sketch

BE REALISTIC. Easier said than implemented. We tend to swing between Optimism and Pessimism, and Realism (we like to think) falls somewhere in the middle. Pessimists condemn optimists for their naivety, and optimists condemn pessimists for blinding themselves to all the good in the world. Mandy K. told me quite some time ago, “Being a realist doesn’t mean ignoring the good and focusing on the bad, it means acknowledging the good while acknowledging the bad.” She told me this in 2009, and since then, that’s been my goal: to forsake the simplistic paradigms, to face the world head-on, to eke out a sort of coherent worldview framed by Logic and Wisdom rather than by fits of fancy. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing decent, and at other times it feels like I’m wandering dark alleys, fearful it’ll come to the point where I’m holding a goat in one hand and fifty bucks in the other with no idea how I got there.

We have, then, the hope for “true love,” reworked in light of perceived actuality, standing out of the murk and mire of our world like a Roman standard on the battlefield, beckoning our eyes and alighting fire in our hearts. Any idea that marriage is the Grand Solution to all our problems, that in marriage the fairy tale comes to life as all the pains and troubles of daily life fade into the background, must be discarded like used tampons. Get those things outta mind and outta sight! Marriage, rather, is like a Grand Enterprise, two human beings becoming one and (we hope) living a shared life in a disconnected world. Life’s ripe with good times and bad times; this world provides us with dark roads and badlands, and marriage doesn’t exempt us from this. If we’re dumb enough to think, even to hope, that marriage is the antidote to a world laden with suffering, then we’ll find ourselves sorely disappointed; and having such an outlook only raises the chances that when things don’t go as planned (as tends to be a trend), we’ll screw up the marriage because we’ve failed to see what marriage is supposed to be. It’s a union, two souls becoming one. It isn’t just a life change you can abandon at him, nor a passing craze. It’s here to stay, because even those who mock the idea of marriage acknowledge that there’s something mystical about it; and seeing what happens when marriage is done wrong (think purgatory or a miniature hell), the critics turn to mockery. Perhaps a better route would be authenticity, facing the dilemma of marriage—something so beautiful that can become something so miserable—and doing our damnedest to see the way through to the other side.

A SKETCH. “Please,” you beg me, “please be brief.” For your sake (and for mine) I’ll do so. I’m unmarried and never have been. But I’ve been in enough relationships, and been close friends with successfully married couples for quite a while, that I know a few things about how to make a relationship work. It all boils down to love. Not romanticized, idealized love but grounded, down-to-earth love. The love that’s rooted in decision and carried through with a lot of resolve and an equal dosage of endurance. It’s not just inviting someone into your life; it’s about making someone else your life. It’s devoting yourself to that person, in the sense that they become your life’s priority: their needs supersede your own. Love’s manifested in selflessness, servitude, sacrifice. In a world driven by impulses and urges, a world where our decisions are located on the map of selfishness and self-indulgence, in a world full of self-seeking cretins trying to “live it up” 24/7, the very idea of marriage as such a weighty ordeal is scored as archaic and ludicrous. And yet their own paths show the fruit of such living, and nothing good can be found there. No matter your “chemistry” or “connection” with someone, no matter the way your heart flutters at the sound of their voice or how seeing their face is the best part of your day, that’s not enough (and it never will be). True Love, a symbiotic decision to love and be loved in the truest sense of the word, that’s what I’m searching for. This reworking of marriage, locating it on the map of what could be called “biblical love,” that’s not a burden nor an imprisonment, it’s a liberation. It’s something my heart craves, something my spirit burns for, and I hope for it, oh! how I hope for it.

And then there’s reality. Cold, unforgiving, unrelenting, doomed for destruction but prospering now in all its horrid and fetid brutality. The way through this mess isn’t just a realistic hope but an honest one. A hope that says, “Yes, this is what I want, this is what I crave, and this is what I’m fighting for.” A hope that says, “Yes, I know this will be difficult, both the Journey & the Destination, but I believe it’s worth it.” Revisiting economics, I’m convinced that hoping for true love is a dangerous gambit riddled with unforeseen risks and terrors, but the beauty and goodness that can be discovered there is worth all that, because true love is a middle finger to the currents of selfishness, greed, and indifference that have become trademarks of our world. This honest hope acknowledges, “Yes, I know this is uncertain, and I know I may be shown a fool. But I’ll still hope for it, because it’s worth it.”

This isn’t a romanticized hope, nor an idealized one. It’s not a naïve hope, and it’s not blind, either. An HONEST hope. A stoic hope. And so I will hope, and I’ll be honest about it. But I won’t just sit in the dirt and wait for love to wander my way. There is a passive kind of hoping, the hoping belonging to the one who’s embraced resignation, a hope that, for the most part, does nothing but deepen the pain and widen the gulf between us and our dreams. This is the worst kind of hope: the kind serving no purpose but to make us feel less miserable (and then going turncoat on us, poisoning our hearts and minds so that we shrink and shrivel in our humanity). The kind of hope I’m advocating, the kind of hope I’m implementing, isn’t passive but active.