New Chapters

It’s safe to say that I haven’t written anything in a while. There are so many reasons for my lack of activity, and maybe one day, when I get them sorted out, I’ll write them down. So, since I’ve been gone for so long, let me bring you up to speed. I have a new job, one that involves seemingly endless travel. For now I’ll remain in the US, but I’m really hoping that something international comes my way. I’m both excited and apprehensive about traveling, but it is what must be done. For the record, I’m tripling my salary, so you can bet I’m going to find a way to make the best of it. (Some may call me a fool for doing it, and that’s why I chose my picture.)

I’m going to try and keep a loose journal filled with interesting tidbits about the different cities I visit. Just kidding. Mostly, it will contain rants about the things I didn’t foresee or the characters I’ll come across. As always, my entries will be light and fluffy in nature, unless something really poignant or amazing happens. If it does, I’ll get out my emotional words and try to convince you of a great truth that everyone already knows but may enjoy a reminder of. And on that note, I’ll start at the beginning.

I’ve seen several articles on blogs across the web discussing whether or not making friends becomes harder as one grows older. Some say it is and some say it isn’t, and I used to count myself among those who felt that good friends just get fewer and farther between the longer I live. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I’ve been meeting good friends my entire life. I can’t complain about that. I can, however, complain about leaving them. So, for the first entry of my journal, let me start whining right off the bat and relate what is really the first step in my new gypsy life: leaving Florida.

Odd as it may sound, I really enjoyed my previous job. For the first time in my life, I didn’t dread going to work. Now, that’s not to say that what I did was heaven on earth, but for the most part, it wasn’t bad. I think, though, what made it not suck so much was the abundance of really nice people to work with. I’ve never had so much fun and gotten paid for doing it. Anyway, when I said I was leaving, it was arranged that on my last day, we would all go to a restaurant that most of us knew and really liked. That, I thought, was a nice gesture on their part, and lunch for us all one more time sounded like the perfect send-off. I was light-hearted and excited about the future, and I fully expected them to get me a card and some sort of trinket as a reminder of the time I spent there.

In a way it was a little awkward, since we had all become the best of co-workers, always sharing a laugh or a lunch, and sometimes even meeting at someone’s house for a barbecue (read: drinking party), so it’s not like we never socialized outside of work. We were friends, but not really close. I had convinced myself that yes, I was going to miss them and no, I probably won’t ever find such a fun place to work again, but we’re all adults and everything would go smoothly. And that’s what I was thinking when I opened the small gift basket on the table in front of me.

The sudden realization that I’ve been wrong, so totally, wonderfully wrong, is a feeling that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of. I love the instant when it suddenly becomes crystal clear that the people I think I know prove themselves to be far more than I had ever imagined. I am at once elated and humbled in those moments; it is a euphoric beyond any drug, and the lowest low. All of life’s major turning points have their indelible memories, and my departure from Florida will always mean that in one final lunch with my friends I realized that I was kidding myself when I thought they were just friends. With one simple gift, they did what only good friends do: They let you know that they care about you more than you know.

But what, you may ask, was in the gift basket? Well, it was a pen, but not just any pen. It was a Cross pen, much like any graduate would (or used to) get. By twisting the body, you can have black ink, red ink, or a pencil. There’s even an eraser hidden on top. It’s not a cheapie plastic thing, but a very nice writing instrument, and up near the pocket clip, my name is neatly engraved in a gothic looking font that’s not too big or too small. It is sleek and elegant, not gaudy at all. It is the perfect gift, and they knew that, and suddenly I knew it as I looked across the table at my smiling friends watching me open it. That I’m at a loss for words is a condition that should happen more often, but I really went speechless over the pen. Well, the pen and the sensation that I was floating as I woke up to the fact that I was surrounded by people who cared about me and would miss me. If that’s not bittersweet I don’t know what is.

I won’t bore you with the fluff and stuff of me telling my friends how I felt; it was just as sappy as you might think. I also won’t bore you with a snoozy soliloquy about how much I miss them now that I’ve gone. So, the only thing left to do is to honor the gift and, more importantly, the warmth they’ve shown me by using (the idea behind) the pen to write down stuff that happens to me so they can read it, along with anyone else who cares to. With every entry to my blog from now on, I am proving myself worthy of having friends such as the ones I left behind in Florida. I know I’ll never be famous, but I hope they know that they helped me to get out of my slump and realize that while I may make new friends in the years to come, I will always remember the ones who thought so well of me. There are no words to express how I feel about them. I hugged the ones I could, and that’s the best I could do, but it’ll never be enough.

Who Loves Ya, Baby?

From the time we first become cognizant of our surroundings until the time we no longer know or care what goes on around us, there isn’t a person on the face of this earth who doesn’t, at one point or another, want to feel loved. From the first smack on the ass to the ringing cacophony that drowns out the sounds of the world for the last time, we have three basic needs: To eat, procreate, and if we’re lucky, to enjoy the warm feeling of being needed. There are countless people on this planet who go through their lives struggling just to eat, and to tell you the truth, it makes me want to moan out loud in empathy for their plight. For all of us who feel that way, the only thing that keeps us from completely breaking down is the sad but true knowledge that we cannot save everyone no matter how badly we want to. The fate of the hungry will have to wait for another essay, though, because I do not have the words for it right now. I may never have them. But I do have some for those of us who, by the simple accident of our birth, are blessed (as it were) with at least a chance to make our world a little brighter by giving more than we take.

You and I both know people who dart through life as if in a shadow, emotional vampires who suck all the fun out of every room they enter, leaving a wake of chaos and bewilderment everywhere they go. Indeed, we often idolize such people, and when they’re gone, we spend years, decades and even centuries trying to understand what made them do the things they do. How about that boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife that you thought was your soul mate whom you found screwing someone else? How much time have you spent trying to understand why they did the things they did? We tell ourselves that the people who hurt us have no clue what they’ve done, but we know that they know, and we know that they simply don’t care. Our feelings mean nothing to them, and yet we still wonder what we could have done to prevent the inevitable. In fact, given the chance, many of us would repeat the same behavior, hoping for a different result. Why do we do that? Because we are the same as them.

John Donne wrote “No man is an island, entire of itself...any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...” The people who wear their hearts on their sleeves intuitively know this. They don’t need a degree in English or a thorough understanding of philosophy to understand that while there are those among us (too numerous to count and often infuriatingly frequent) who have no regard for anyone else’s feelings, they are still part of a collective consciousness that is the inherent and sole burden (or grace) that is the legacy of humankind. It is a yin and yang existence that we share. There are “good” people, and there are, in today’s vernacular, “haters”. How do we make sense of this? How do we not give up and take the easy road, joining the haters and ignoring all feelings but our own?

It’s not easy. I certainly can’t sit here and say that I have achieved nirvana and am as one with all living beings. In fact, I have no pedestal from which to proclaim the truth which will set all men free. But, I can offer a bit of humble advice: Before you go out and tell someone that you love them, make sure that you love yourself first. I don’t mean in a selfish, narcissistic way, but you have to be happy with you before you can be happy with someone else. Sounds easy, but it’s harder than you might think. If wishes were fishes we’d all have a fry, but wouldn’t it be nice if we thought before we said something that we knew would hurt someone else’s feelings? I don’t mean in the stupid overly PC world that we’ve become, but if we really tried to think before we acted, our world would be a better place. Pick your own cliché, but it all comes down to the golden rule.

I picked Telly Savalas as my title and theme because his iconic trademark line is one we should all think about. When you hear that line, your answer should be “me”. If it’s not, you’re in for a world of hurt. If you can’t give that answer, then rest assured that no one else will.

Zoot Suit

Good clichés stand the test of time because they offer kernels of truth in just a phrase or a sentence. There have been many phrases coined in the mint of experience that, while priceless, end up in the gutter, apparently too troublesome to bend over and pick up. In fact, there are a great many idioms that have been floating around for millennia, trying to impart an important lesson that we perpetually ignore. Not learning from the past does indeed condemn us to repeat it, but I suppose it’s the nature of the beast to keep getting burned before we stop sticking our fingers in the fire. I’ll be damned if I can explain why they haven’t disappeared from our vernacular due to obsolescence except for the simple fact that people have an uncanny ability to ignore things that are as plain as…well…the noses on our collective face. But, since I’m not on a serious rant this time, I’d like to share with you a cliché that I’ve always found relevant.

“Never judge a book by its cover” is a phrase that appears in varied forms in almost every language and culture on the earth. To judge something based solely on its appearance is just plain foolish, yet who among us isn’t guilty of it at one time or another. If you’ve never seen a picture of a naked mole rat, look here. Even the most ardent animal lover would be hard-pressed to fight the urge to kill it with fire if one wandered into their kitchen. Shakespeare said “The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape,” so it’s probably best to remember that appearances are just that: appearances.

I really want to write about an extension of the book/cover saying that has been adapted to “clothes make the man.” I simply cannot fathom why so many people put so much importance on clothing. I have a personal stake in this, so hear me out. I like to wear overalls. They’re comfortable and practical. They cover everything that needs to be covered and if you get the right kind, they last for years. And yet, for all of their benefits, I suffer ridicule from all kinds of people for the fashion crime of being comfortable. I once dated a woman who said “You can never go out in public with me dressed like that.” I snickered, but she wasn’t laughing. She was serious. She was literally telling me what I could or could not wear. I knew how to dress myself by the time I was 7, so I didn’t need someone telling me how to do it. In case you’re wondering, that relationship didn’t last very long.

My current girlfriend isn’t a fan of my overalls either. She’s not as militant as the other, but I still get the “THAT’S what you’re wearing?” sarcasm, and I don’t get it. She bought me a shirt not long ago that was nice, but a little flashier than I would have bought, and I accepted it graciously. It was just a t-shirt, and it even had a skull on it, but it has a kind of “look at me” air to it that just doesn’t fit me. She raved about it, and said it looked good; it is evidently the height of t-shirt chic. She paid 50 bucks for it. For a t-shirt. I may not know much about fashion, but I do know that t-shirts don’t cost that much money. Hell, I can get a sack of them for ten. It’s probably a good thing that I never had children, because I would think nothing of having them wear potato sacks until they were old enough to dress themselves.

So I’m wondering, is it the look of the fancy clothes that fashionistas like, or is it because they cost so much? Does an outrageous price tag mean the clothes look better? Am I missing something here? Maybe I’ll just start telling the naysayers that I paid five hundred dollars for my overalls, call them cretins, and stick my nose in the air while I stomp off in a huff eating a tin of caviar that I had hidden in one of my many pockets.

Wordy Gurdy

“When ideas fail, words come in very handy.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said that, and I couldn’t agree more. I love words. I love the act of choosing words to write down. I love search for the perfect word to convey exactly what I have in my head. It doesn’t work as often as I’d like (bless you, Goethe), but I love it still. I know that sounds like the geekiest thing in the world, but if you’ve never agonized over word selection, I feel sorry for you. Now, before you think I’m going to try and choke some deep thought out of you with literary mothballs, relax. I just want to expound a bit on proper word choice, and what a nifty effect it has whether we realize it or not. Per Goethe, I want to show how more than one idea can be put across with the same words. And I’m even going to use a couple examples from our own time…Well, my time, anyway.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a huge fan of the Eagles. They’re OK, and I don’t hate them, but they’re not one of my favorites. However, I have to bow (in private) at the clever use of ordinary words in the song “Hotel California” that has secretly fascinated me for years. If you don’t know that song, you’re either very young or you’ve been living under a rock since the mid seventies. Now before you dismiss me as an aging hippy trying to explain the allegorical undertones of a song that was released to a stoned yet appreciative audience, again I say, relax. I only want to deal with two lines to make my point, because that’s all I need. The lines are as follows:
They held the dance in the courtyard; sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.
Now that I think of it, the first line is only included for context. It is the second line that piques my geekiness. My consternation is only this: Does the word “some” in the line refer to the dance or the participants? Is it the dance that is impossible to forget, or are the dancers themselves the focal point? It works either way, doesn’t it? It is ambiguous as to what the subject of the narrator’s point of view is, and that’s what makes it so interesting, and so clever.

Let’s try another one, although this one is a bit different, in that I have no way to confirm the exact lyrics. The song is called “A Thousand Knives” by Ted Nugent, who has seen fit to not publish any official lyrics to what is, well, an obscure song. It was never a hit, so why the secrecy? In fact, why would anyone in the music business refuse to allow their lyrics to be printed? Call me crazy, but if you’re counting on your product being heard and understood by the consumer, it seems to me that your privacy issues are moot. In any case, the lines to the song in question are, as near as I can discern, as follows: “A couple lies/eyes are like a thousand knives; They cut in to you baby…” The reason for the “eyes/lies” slash is that I don’t know which word is the right one. As sung, it’s impossible to distinguish if he’s saying eyes or lies, and it matters which word is used because the meaning of the line depends on it. Is he singing about a look or a deed; either one can be as sharp as, well, a thousand knives, but we don’t know which it is.

The idea of picking out just the right word probably seems a bit esoteric to all except those who take delight in such a task, but it is all important. Readers have it easy, in a way, in that the words have already been chosen. But isn’t it just perfect when an author is able to throw them a curve by choosing words that can be taken in more than one way? The examples I’ve used are fluffy, I know, but they serve to make my point. Is it the dance or the participants? Betrayal or expression? Both work, but the meaning or the scene changes and that’s important. Goethe knew this, hence his observation. It’s hard sometimes to get an idea across on paper and those pesky words can serve a dual purpose by either communicating a thought clearly, or obscuring two or more ideas, causing endless speculation as to just exactly what the meaning is supposed to be. Fluffy examples? Yeah, but this has been going on for a long, long time.

Let’s get a bit meatier. Genesis 1:26 reads: “God said ‘Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness’…” (KJV) Can you see the pronoun problem here? “Us, our, ourselves.” Why not “me, my and myself”? Who, exactly, is “us”? I don’t want to get into biblical fallacies; I just want to know why the author(s) chose to use “us” instead of “me”. As a writer, I know that authors don’t choose words lightly. They know exactly what they want to say, don’t they? Forget for a moment that no one could have possibly been around to hear or know what God said before he created people. How could they have known his exact words? We’ll let that one go (although you should think about it), and try another biblical example where we get it straight from the source. There should be no problems with a direct quote. Right? Exodus 20:3 reads “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (KJV) Why, oh why, is this phrased like it is? As it reads, it sounds as if God knows there is competition, doesn’t it? If He is the ONE god, why would he mention others? It’s that “us” and “them” thing again. But, I’m not going too deep here. I just want to point out the importance of choosing the right word, because it matters.

I want to close with Goethe again by saying that the quote can be backed up with a myriad of examples, but not all ideas are obscured by words. There are plenty examples of prose that is as clear as crystal, and I believe we use those instances to help us to better try to explain the fuzzy ones. I found a perfect example of that in the oddest place: Behind a boiler at the 7up factory in Holland, Michigan, clinging to a rusty cabinet that hung over a lime-scaled sink was a little pink magnet, dusty and forgotten. It was small and cracked but legible, and it displayed letters floating in a bowl, like alphabet soup. The letters spelled “WORDS”, and beneath the bowl was this admonition: “Keep ‘em soft and sweet. You may have to eat them.” How about that? A great idea in just twelve words; no ambiguity here. I know, it’s not literature, but it conveys a message everyone can easily understand, and there is no greater goal for those who like to choose words.

Crime and Punishment

I saw a video clip yesterday, and as I watched it, I realized how much different parenting is now than it was when I was young. I can’t find a link to the story anymore; I guess it’s really not that newsworthy, but here’s what happened: An Ohio mother placed her 12 year old son on a street corner and for two hours had him hold a sign that said “I am a thief and a liar” for stealing a cell phone, lying about it, and refusing to apologize once he’d been caught. (Yes, she watched him the entire time and no, she didn’t get the apology). There are those now calling for child abuse charges.

As usual, I’m going to tell you what I thought of that. Because I have a hard time growing up, I find myself on the sympathetic side of children when they’re being disciplined, mostly because I remember being in that position with alarming frequency. For a 12 year old, there can be no fear like the fear of having to answer for something you thought you were going to get away with but didn’t. The cold feeling in the pit of your stomach when you get caught red-handed and you instantly know, KNOW that the hammer is going to fall is a pitiful (and sometimes funny) thing to behold, but I didn’t see a trace of fear on what I could see of this kid’s face. “Frustrated Mom makes son wear humiliating sign in public” is the tagline for this story. I really hoped to see a repentant and embarrassed child, but I didn’t. I saw a kid who might as well have been wearing a burka lolling on a street corner being ignored by almost everyone, and in the end, not apologizing for his actions. Where’s the lesson here?

I don’t have any kids, so no one wants to listen to my child rearing advice, and for once, I don’t have any (well, not much) to dispense. All I can do, as usual, is relate another story and hope the similarities as well as the differences don’t go unnoticed by you, the discerning reader.

From a very young age, I knew the difference between right and wrong. If I was right, everyone was happy. If I was wrong, I was the only one unhappy. Very unhappy. Painfully unhappy. As you might guess, even though I knew the difference between right and wrong, it still took me many years to solidify the concept that not doing what I wasn’t supposed to do was a good thing. I remember one hot fall Illinois day when I was unhappy about being grounded. My brother and sisters could leave the yard at will, but I, like a dog with a shock collar, could not, for leaving the yard would incur the wrath of my mother, and that was never a good thing. Just the thought of her gritting her teeth while she growled my name was the stuff of nightmares. My siblings, who were well aware of my predicament made no efforts at modesty; they pointed and taunted and gleefully screamed their plans for the afternoon, all of which entailed leaving sight and earshot of our house. Through my despair I hoped that one of them would pity me and stay, but none did. They all left, and I was alone in the empty back yard with the sun silently blaring down.

For a while I sat near the basement door, listening to my mother’s sewing machine droning on in the cool house while I baked in the heat. I wasn’t allowed to go inside (none of us were) except to eat lunch and have a glass of grape juice at 10 and 3. I hated my situation, hated my mother and hated the whole world. And in a moment of clarity, I suddenly realized that America is a free country and by God, I can do anything I want to do! So I left.

It doesn’t really matter where I went or what I did. Suffice to say that I behaved like a kid who wasn’t grounded and it felt really good. I had been gone for two or three hours and was playing contentedly with my buddy Curt in his back yard. His mother had just brought us some Kool-aid and I had utterly forgotten, or maybe just didn’t care that I was on the lam.

It has been said that a person is never more alive than when they’re about to die; their senses are heightened and they are keenly aware of the brink they’re teetering on…and most say they like it. I can understand that. But, as with all good things, they can end most abruptly. As I sat in Curt’s back yard, a marauding monster seized and crushed my idyllic bliss. Like a slavering demon loosed upon the neighborhood, my mother parted the shrubs and came marching across the yard, paddle in hand, teeth grinding and eyes blazing. I was frozen with fear. I sat and watched with mouth agape as she approached, saying nothing, but positively exuding anger. She snatched me up with one arm and commenced to paddling me with the other. I had already learned that there was no sense in trying to use my free hand to block the stinging blows. Not only did it hurt like hell being paddled on the fingers, it only served to infuriate her even more. It took about fifteen minutes to walk to Curt’s house, and I hopped while she paddled me every step of the way. I cried from pain and fear, of course, but I also cried because I knew that I could have avoided the whole awful scene if I had just done what I was supposed to do.

The spanking wasn’t the worst part of my penance. School was just starting, and for two solid weeks I had to come straight home, take a bath, put my pajamas with cartoon baseball players on and get in bed until it was dinner time. I got to eat, and then had to go right back to my bed. I could hear my brother and sisters outside playing in the twilight. The first weekend of my sentence was the annual block party, and I spent all day Saturday in bed, listening to the entire neighborhood partying and laughing and doing the things that people who aren’t grounded get to do. It was awful. The important thing is that I learned my lesson. Of course I got grounded again, but I NEVER walked away again. I never tried to get out of paying for what I’d done, and isn’t that the goal of punishment, to remind us that everything we do has consequences to accept if we choose to flaunt the rules?

It seems to me that the kid in the video got off real easy. If it had been me and my mother, I would have been standing in my underwear holding the sign and screaming to every passing car that I was a thief and a liar, and I probably would have been bleeding somewhere. No, I think this kid, unless he really gets himself together, is prison bound. He reminds me of a kid I knew once who (finally) had to spend some time at a juvenile facility. I went to pick him up, hoping that he had learned something. In a nonchalant way, he said that being locked up wasn’t that bad; he had made some friends and the food was good. Exasperated, I asked him if the fact that he couldn’t leave had any effect on him, and he said he hadn’t really thought about it while he was there. Hmmm. He went to real jail later.

My point here is that humiliation and fear are very powerful motivators and should not be shunned as a way of punishment. In fact, I’m all for it. The world is a tough place and children should learn from a very early age that it does not exist to make them happy. In fact, I daresay that not punishing swiftly and firmly is like setting out a welcome mat for later strife. Do I think children should be beaten, battered or broken? Of course not. I do think, however, that to mollycoddle them and feign anger and impose “a stern talking to” or time out for their misdeeds is just as bad, if not worse than real physical abuse. If you start early, and I mean from birth, and let them know that choices have to be made and consequences have to be dealt with, they are playing and learning on a level field. Feeling guilty and humiliated is the first step; the second is to turn them into the catalyst for creating empathy and modesty. If done correctly, with assurances that the world isn’t ending and the lesson is learned, punishment will be needed less frequently. You know why? Because they’ll learn right from wrong with your guidance. You don’t have to be a parent to know that. It’s common sense, isn’t it?

Holiday Blurbs

So much has been going on lately that I just haven’t had (or taken) the time to write, which is wrong. As you can tell from my title, I haven’t totally committed to one subject, so until I do, I’ll just jot down a few things that have been on my mind lately. I hope you enjoy them.

That Stupid Mating Game
It’s funny how sometimes, when we KNOW we shouldn’t do a thing, we do it anyway. Actually, it’s more sad than funny, but you know what I mean. We try to fool ourselves into thinking that this time it will be OK. And it just doesn’t matter how clear you think your head is because you can still fall into traps that you know you should avoid. I had a torrid one month affair with a woman recently who was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. Normally, girls like her don’t want anything to do with guys like me, but much to my surprise, she literally threw herself at me. I should have known better, but I got suckered by appearance. You already know how this story turns out: She was a self-centered bitch, and I totally put up with it. Now, in my defense, I knew it wasn’t going to last, but I sure wanted to ride that ride as long as it was open. But I knew, KNEW that it wasn’t a good thing and I did it anyway. It was a cruelty I inflicted upon myself, and I wonder when I’ll learn my lesson. I won’t drone on about skin deep beauty and all that while I whine about my own weakness. In fact, I’m happy to report that I did manage to find someone I can put up with who can also put up with me. I’ll spare you the smarmy details, but suffice to say that I am much happier with the inner beauty than I ever was with the shell. Things are really looking up on the romance front. More on that as it develops.


Our New President
What do I think of Barack Obama? I hope he does a good job, although I don’t expect anything less than business as usual. As I’ve said before, anybody who really wants to be the president must have something wrong with them. But, egomania aside, I hope he is as sincere as he comes across. The guy is a gifted speaker, and we all (should) know that charisma is what gets people elected, not “plans”. Right after he won the election, I checked out a huge white supremacy site to see what they had to say, and they were “temporarily down due to server overload”. The only people who could read the threads were members. I had to laugh, though, because the reason they gave was the recent “obamanation” at the polls. There’s nothing like having the wind taken out of your sails, and in some cases, it’s just hilarious. On a serious note, I really hope that they can go back and sulk without assassinating him. Nothing would convince the rest of the world that Americans are idiots than something like that. It’s scary to think that some people relish the thought of a race war; I really hope they can get with the times. Google “stormfront” to see just how far out of alignment some of these people are, and think real hard about how good it might be to have a gun.

I’m sorry to say I only had two topics for this installment. On the plus side, though, I did come up with an idea I want to ramble about; I’m drafting it right now. I know the suspense is unbearable, but I will post a couple things in the next few days. It’s finally holiday time, and with it comes some time to do nothing but what I want to do. Finally. Happy Thanksgiving.

The M Word

I could have called this an advice column again, writing to tell nieces and nephews (and anyone else who would listen) about the joys and perils of falling in love, but seeing as I’ve had very little success in doing so, I’m afraid my words would ring rather hollow. Still, I was thinking about it today, for many reasons, and I decided that I wanted to pontificate on it anyway. Perhaps I should narrow my focus a bit from love in general to the dreaded “M” word, with the hope that some tidbits of advice (or at least a warning sign that I missed) will shine through.

In our time, marriage is a legal institution, but we all know that it dates back to, well, pretty much the dawn of civilization. In most cultures, religion also plays a key role in marriage. However, legal and moral issues aside, the fact of the matter is that almost universally, the contract of marriage involves two people who promise each other, their families and their gods that they will literally spend the rest of their lives together, forsaking, as it were, all others. That’s a tall order. Now, assuming that you are a good person who doesn’t lie to yourself, you’d better think twice before you agree to such a thing. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t make mistakes or promises in the heat of passion; it’s so easy to do. We also know that half of all marriages (in the US) fail, so that means every other person you meet has failed to live up to a promise they made to someone they claimed to love. Remember that when it’s time to trust someone.

It sounds selfish to say, but each of us really needs to look out for number one. To put another before yourself is indeed a noble gesture and is, in my opinion, the hallmark of being a good human being. There’s nothing wrong with putting your heart out in the open, but make sure your display has an appreciative audience. If the one you love doesn’t treat you exactly the way you want to be treated, move on. It’s that simple. It’s easy to convince yourself that an off word or action from your lover is nothing more than a trivial shadow in an otherwise blinding light, something easily overlooked, but I can guarantee you that what seems like a bit of fluff now will turn into a giant carnivorous lint ball if you ignore it. I don’t mean to sound harsh, and I know that any good relationship is built solidly on a give and take foundation. The point is, only you know how you like to be treated, and a good potential mate will recognize that with little or no prodding.

Don’t get married because it’s convenient. Two incomes, even a lottery windfall won’t make a good marriage. If you feel pressured to get married, don’t. If your lover dangles the prospect of marriage like a carrot or (insert appropriate lure), don’t agree and get out as soon as possible. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that love pretty much equals trust. If you trust someone (see above warnings), and I mean trust them completely, then you’re on the right path. It’s easy to read those words and agree, but remember to watch for signs that they trust you as well; it only works if both sides of the scale are even. A lover that is overly jealous probably has someone else’s shoes under their bed when you’re not around.

I’ve only been married once, and of course, divorced once, but I like to think that I learned many lessons from it. I’ve had several chances to be married again, and I’m almost positive that my reluctance to do so was the root cause of the failed relationships, and that’s just wrong. Maybe I’m a dreamer, but if you’re going to get married, I think you had better be damned sure you’re getting married for the right reasons. Even if you think your boyfriend or girlfriend is the perfect human being (and crazy, cool love can make you think that), you need to stop and think. Really think. Percy Sledge says “loving eyes can never see”, and you’d better believe that’s the truth. (Look to right of screen on linked page for player)

I want to end on a positive note. I don’t want to be accused of being bitter. Marry the woman (or man) who makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world. Don’t marry them for what they have because possessions will always be just that, and they will never make you happy. Don’t marry them for their appearance because that will fade. Marry the person who can see your flaws as you can see theirs and neither of you is uncomfortable with it. The Percy Sledge song warned of blind love; but if you can relate to this one, by Shades of Blue, then I am envious. When I can hear that song and know that it fits perfectly, I’ll try marriage again.