An Outsider's View of Marriage

Lately, I have been exposed to two separate blogs on the marital relationship.  Today I read Matt Walsh's Blog entitled "Our Society Doesn't Know Anything About Marriage," which is a response to the internet's response to a blog post by Seth Adams called, "Marriage Isn't For You."

I highly recommend reading both posts as they offer some very insightful views on the marital relationship and the motivation that should go into it.  They key point from both posts is that a long-lasting marriage is based on a foundation of service from both husband and wife to their spouse.

The view I wish now to express is that of an individual who finds himself outside of a marital relationship and who finds himself largely content with this present arrangement.

I was raised to believe the view that a person's potential can only be maximized through a marital covenant and the conception of children as a means of furthering the work of God on Earth.  From the age of 12, I was counseled by my parents and church leaders to seek the company only of similar-minded females who espoused the virtues of morality, fidelity, compassion, and a testimony of the divinity of Jesus Christ.  While I wasn't supposed to 'date' any one girl until at least the age of 16, puberty creates an interest that is all but impossible to ignore.  I had good friends, many of them that were female and who I saw as fitting the criteria I was taught to look for.

There was only one girl that I had any kind of exclusive relationship with from about the age of 15-17, and then a myriad of girls came into and went out of the prospective marriage pool from that point until about two or three years ago when I found myself literally burned out from the pursuit of someone to spend the rest of my life with.

The questions I find myself facing is whether my lost interest in dating is somehow limiting the maximization of my potential as a person.  Are there not other ways I can contribute to society that might be on par with the contribution of new members of society that are the result of reproduction and parental skill? Is my selfishness in deciding to limit the way I might share myself with a member of the opposite sex in any long-term fashion showing a lesser degree of selflessness that will be expressed in contributing my time to the service of others, the contribution of my income to worth causes, or the sharing of my experiences with those who are willing to listen.

If you are able to find someone to spend your life with and you choose to contribute to society by rearing children, that's great.  More power to you.  Give it everything you possibly can and make that marriage the best it could possibly be.  Your happiness will be great in the joy of loving your spouse and your children the best way you know.

Likewise, my more solitary path can have just as much potential to leave a lasting mark on the lives of others.  My capacity to teach, to serve, and to love are found in the expression of those abilities just as the exercise of a specific muscle group strengthens those muscles.  It's a simple matter of finding opportunities to enrich the lives of others.  That is what compassion and service are truly all about.  I know that my greatest joys have come from knowing that I have been a positive influence for good.

Hoop or Opportunity

Last night I attended an organizational meeting presented by a couple of individuals from HJ & Associates, a small accounting firm that operates in Salt Lake City.  A lot of the material covered was nothing new as it was a presentation on the merits of a college education and the doors that it can open.  They also discussed things like developing your own personal brand and discovering and pursuing your passion.

But one of the things that really stuck out most was a statement that made me think of the various requirements associated with the acquisition of a college degree and whether those requirements are seen as hoops or opportunities.

Looking back, I wish now that I had had the wisdom to have seen these requirements as the latter rather than the former.  Doing so might have provided some motivation to have done better in certain classes that I saw, at the time, as irrelevant and/or unnecessary.  Much of my attitude was comprised of the level of interest my professor was able to garner with the presentation of their course material.  The professors that were able to make their courses engaging made it much easier to earn a good grade that those that felt like some form of punishment for my mere existence. 

But that holds true for all of us.  It is easy to do well in the courses that we find interesting; while we have to drag ourselves by our ears to fully capitalize on those classes that weren’t as interesting.  The things we aren’t interested in are seen as hoops that we have to jump through in order to reach or destination.  Our efforts may not be as wholehearted when we see a requirement as something we have to do rather than something we want to do.

So the question becomes, how can I turn hoops into opportunities?  How can I see this task of ‘something I really don’t want to’ do as stepping-stone that will bring me one step closer to my goal?  I think the greatest key is knowing what that ultimate goal is.  If you don’t have a destination, how can you possibly know what direction you need to go?  If you don’t know the desired end, you cannot establish a plan to make it come to pass.  So know your passion, know what drives you, know where you want to go, who you want to be, and you’re half way there.

You then only have to worry about the execution of the plan.  The hoop has now become an opportunity to bring you closer to goal as you utilize your passion to drive you forward.

I presently have an economics course that I have been having a really hard time staying engaged in.  In the past, this has been an immense challenge for me, and I have had to retake the class.  I don’t want to repeat this pattern.  The class focuses on international trade, and where I have an interest in international business, this class will undoubtedly provide insight into how I can help businesses foster growth through trade.  It’s simply a matter of turning economic theory into practical applications where I can see how this knowledge will benefit companies I may work for in the future.

What hoop can *you* turn into an opportunity?

Who I was - Who I am

After sharing my blog with a friend who hadn’t read it and talking about it a little bit, I decided to go back over my posts and I find it remarkable the person I was then and the person I am now.  I made the comment that I hardly recognize that person as there has been a transition from the boy who was tucked far into the fold of LDS theology to a man who has had the bubble of faith burst and is now walking a different path.

I was a person consumed with the desire to find someone to share my life with.  One individual dominated that desire, though there were occasional distractions and the possibility of being with somebody else, though none of those prospects every yielded much beyond casual friendship.  The place I find myself now is one where I think it wouldn’t be the end of the world to spend my life as a bachelor.  As a matter of fact, remaining single may very well leave my life open to a great number of possibilities that would be closed if there was somebody else to consider in the plans for my life.  Every now and then I’ll look around at those who have found companionship and experience a longing to have something similar, but such feelings are fleeting and quickly filed back away as a simple distraction.  As far as dating is concerned, I see it as nothing more than a child playing with fire and constantly getting burned.  Eventually interest in continually being burned is lost and a new activity is found.

I was a person of strong conservative principles and moorings; but over the course of the years, I have found myself leaning further libertarian.  A simple example can be conveyed in the fact that I believe in the freedom of association.  When applied, this liberty extends to individuals seeking deviation from past cultural norms in regards to homosexuality.  The freedom to engage in a romantic relationship with whoever one sees fit is core to a free society, although homosexuality does lead to a problem when it comes to the propagation of the human race; but that is another matter in itself.

Some things have not changed.  I still love musicals, especially Les Miserables.  I listen to the soundtrack at least twice a week.  The nice thing is that I finally had a chance to see the production on stage a couple months ago, so that ambition has been crossed off my list.  Music has a power that is unmatched in its ability to shape my mood and restore sanity when waters are troubled.  I suppose this is why I don’t care for loud or particularly raucous music.  I generally prefer things that are softer, more melodic, and just instrumental.

In one of my former posts, I utilized a quote from D. Tood Christofferson from a CES fireside.  It mentioned the descent from being a covenant keeper to someone who ultimately comes to despise himself.  For the longest time, I despised myself for my personal weaknesses that the LDS faith would deem immoral.  I won’t go into details, but I didn’t need to stop keeping covenants to feel despicable.  I felt that way because I knew that I was routinely falling short of LDS standards.  I allowed those immoral actions to define me.  I was so focused on the things that I was doing wrong, that I had little time to see what I might be doing right, or to see what value I might have in myself other than the utter lack of value of some of my actions.  There is no shortage of reminders of the ways in which you are falling short in LDS theology.  Weekly meetings that dredge on for three hours on Sunday, 10-hour guilt sessions semiannually, and countless other activities to see others and see the ways in which you aren’t satisfying the requirements takes a huge toll on a person, and that toll is one of the great reasons that I finally decided that I had enough.  I didn’t need these constant reminders of my own inadequacy; and while I have had to struggle to reconcile the feelings that it seems I might be doing nothing, I am doing things now that are making me a better person that I was too distracted to be able to do while involved in church activity.  I am finding out who I am on my own.  Perhaps one day I’ll go back, or there is just as much a chance that I will find that life can be just as fulfilling outside of the Church, or in my case more so, than it ever was in it.

I know there are those that would say, “ but that’s what the atonement is all about.  That is why you need to pray, and study your scriptures, and go to your meetings.”  No, I know nothing about the atonement other than I never felt any power carrying me on away from sin or sustaining my efforts to turn from a life I believed was wrong, praying is just vocalizing one’s thoughts to an empty room, scriptures are (supposedly) thousands of year old ambiguous texts upon which organizations have placed their own interpretations leaving the individual to either accept or reject those interpretations, and church meetings are an oligarchic way of keeping the masses huddled in certain cultural norms and ways of thinking. Anything that I have said in the past is little more than a projection of the person I thought I was supposed to be rather than who I really am.

Some time ago, in a history course, I began to conceive of religion as nothing more than a social construct used by those in power to influence the masses and as a means of explaining the things in life that are unknowable.  History demonstrates people believing in a pantheon of gods that influenced every day events from the rising of the sun, to the changing of the seasons, to the movement of the stars, to the flooding of the plains.  These gods were vengeful and in need of constant appeasement. Time progressed and people began to explore a theology of monotheism and finally one deity was established that wasn’t vengeful but full of love and compassion.  One only needs to look at the difference between the gods of the Old Testament and the New Testament to see this difference. Still wars have raged in the name of even this religion.  Today this religious belief is used to infringe on the rights of individuals to exercise their liberties.

So really, the person I was was a person focused on relationships.  One relationship was that of trying to discover an individual with whom I could share my physical existence.  The other relationship was with someone/something that I had never seen, never heard, and had limited interaction with, if the interaction was every anything more than the firing of neural impulses.

Now, I find myself pursuing things that are more stimulating in a more real way.  My love of learning compels me to learn new things on a daily basis.  I still strive to be a better person than I was yesterday, but absent the religious influence.

Pieces of the Puzzle

Every day is an opportunity for discovery, and sometimes the most valuable discoveries come by way of the observations of others. I often wonder who I am and what the possibilities of my life might be.  I grew up hearing that the possibilities for life are endless and that I could be whatever I wanted to be.  But with so much ambiguity, it is hard to discover what it is you *want* to do and even more importantly, what you want to do, that you can do well, that you wake up in the morning excited for the day because it’s another chance to do it.  In the course of the last few months, I have had some aspects of my personality emphasized that were somehow masked that are helping me shape out who I am, what I want to do, and how to go about doing it.

Over the summer I took an economics class.  One day, the professor and I were talking after class and he made a remark to me that he saw me working with big-shots selling them something or other.  I’ve never thought of myself of a salesman; but perhaps I should think about it more.  The opportunity to sell something occurs every day.  We sell our time to the activities we find worthwhile.  We sell who we are to those we seek to have relationships with, whatever capacity that relationship might entail.  We sell ourselves in the job market to employers who seek our talents and skills.  We sell our convictions in the conversations we have during the day.  The question in any situation is, “What am I selling?”  I can be a good salesman if the product is right and I believe in its capacity to expand and enhance the life of the person I am trying to sell to.

Secondly, on a somewhat related topic, I was working with a former professor to create a personal statement outlining my reasons for wanting to participate in a foreign learning experience through the university I am attending.  She pointed out my engagement in her class, even in spite of the fact that it wasn’t related to the major I am primarily interested in, and the way that she was impressed with my curiosity and hunger for knowledge.  This impacted me because it seems like this is something that has been lying dormant, especially while I wasn’t in school and was stuck in the doldrums of a pretty routine life.  I am curious, but I need stimulation and an atmosphere that fosters that curiosity.  School has been a great means of stimulating that hunger as there are things I need to learn; but I have been wondering how I can develop this curiosity in my job and my life.

Another thing I have learned in the past is that one of life’s greatest satisfactions comes from knowing that you have been a force of positive change in the life of somebody else.  The problem is that it is very hard to know when you have had that kind of effect.  Part of it is because such interactions may be rare; the other reason is because that person may not ever find the opportunity to express the impact you have had.  Contributory to the above is that sometimes that effect isn’t even fully realized until long after an interaction has taken place.

Ultimately, the bottom line is finding a way to incorporate this salesmanship, curiosity, and desire to be a force of positive change into something that can lead to a productive life.

Scattered Thoughts

There was a time I thought I knew you

There was a time I thought you cared

I thought we were connected somehow

Yet we’ve only grown apart

I can’t say why or how

It seems like every relationship goes this way

It starts off interesting and new

The novelty fades

And I find myself with one less piece of my heart

How many times do you get burned

Before you stop playing with fire

How do I look at my heart

And see anything but the scars

Where do I belong

What do I want to do

What is my passion

Why do I get out of bed in the morning

And most fundamentally

Who am I

Promises of potential

I can be anything I want to be

Limits are supposed to only be in my head

How to overcome those limits

How to reach for the stars

And not trip on a piece of straw

I keep people at a distance

Am I protecting myself

Or simply putting my own happiness out of reach