The Road Untaken and the Talk Not Given - musings on spousal selection

A couple weeks ago I was asked to speak in church.  I went through this process of writing out my whole talk, and then at 9 pm Saturday night I decided I wanted to talk about something else.  I mentioned this whilst I was speaking and a couple of my friends told me they wanted me to post my un-given talk on my blog.  So, here it is, more or less, adapted to secular blog instead of theological oration.

I want to talk to you guys about one of my favorite books.  I've written about it before on this blog, in my list of the five books everyone should read, but specifically every girl should read before she turns 20.  I'm rather proud of the fact that that is in my list of top 10 most popular posts, btw.  Anyway, I'm talking of Little Women.  I would like to assume that, as readers of my blog, you have of course, already read Little Women after I recommended it before, or you have already read it on your own because you have superlative taste.  But if neither of those things are true, I shall give a brief and incredibly inadequate summary for you.  Little Women, published in 1868 by Louisa May Alcott, tells the story of Jo March and her 3 sisters as they transition from young girls to women.  Jo, the penultimate child, is the classic tomboy bucking against the restrictions of gentility and societal expectations.  Early into the story she befriends Teddy Lawrence, the boy next door, and he is quickly adopted into the family as a brother.

Ah, wee baby Christian Bale...you did a pretty good job I guess

At this point I supposed I should warn of upcoming spoilers, but guys....the book has been out for 150+ years, not to mention made into at least one major film.  So I feel like you should probably get over it.

So anyway, Jo and Teddy grow up as best friends, sharing the same sense of humor, the same interests, and enjoying the same activities. And as they get older, Teddy starts trying to lay the ground work to take his relationship with Jo to the next level.

Here's the thing guys.  I just finished this book for the first time in many many years, only this time I listened to it as an audiobook.  I don't know if it was the woman reading the book or just my frame of mind this particular go through but for the first time I found I kind of had a thing for Teddy.  I never appreciated how funny and sassy he is before.  But I realized something else, too.  I've conducted 20-odd years of thorough study on this via film and TV and I can tell you definitively....Jo and Teddy are legit made for each other.  They are the text book definition of chemistry.  At least by modern romantic standards.  Think about it.  Isn't that what ever rom com tells you to look for?

Your perfect match.

I love puns so much

Love, and consequently marriage, is about finding that perfect match.  In practical terms that looks like someone who will validate you.  It's like "You watch the Great British Baking Show? OMG, I, too, watch the Great British Baking Show!!   At last I can stop feeling weird and just watch and love the Great British Baking Show with someone....which is all I really ever wanted."

In contemporary society, where long-term monogamous relationships are approved of at all, they are marketed as the ultimate bff validating relationship.  Your spouse is that person who will always be on your side, who likes what you like, and who reassures you of your place in the world because they occupy it with you......But guys.  Jo doesn't marry Teddy.

Teddy goes off to college and when he comes home he asks Jo to marry him.  He, like me this time through, believes in the idea of a perfect match.  But Jo says no.  She breaks his heart.  She breaks his heart because she understands that there is another way of loving and another way to choose a spouse.

Instead of a perfect match Jo wants a perfect complement.

eheheheheheh

She knows this because it is the marriage she has watched her whole life--that of her parents.  Early on Jo's mother talks to her about her hasty temper, explaining that it will cause her so much grief if she doesn't learn to control it.  Young Jo bemoans how impossible it is to remember and her mother makes a confession.  She, too, struggles to control her temper.  But her greatest strength in her efforts is her husband.  He knows her struggle and when she needs help he gives her a small sign to remind her of what she wants.  .

This was another aspect of the book I'd never really appreciated before.  Essentially it was a portrait of a much less common type of relationship, even back then, but it gave a whole different idea of what a marriage could be.  One person loving the other enough to patiently help them when it was needed, and the other person loving enough to humble themselves and accept that help.  In this sort of marriage the goal is not to comfortably validate you, but gently and lovingly push you towards progression and improvement.  In this marriage two people join together to share the work of becoming the best people they can possibly be.

I don't think it is a coincidence that the modern idea of love is the philosophy of matching and validation.  It is easier.  It asks so much less of us.  A complementary relationship takes work.  It requires humility and love and dedication.  But if you put in that effort you will have a partner who is as invested in helping you attain perfection as they are in achieving it themselves.  Can you imagine any greater or more valuable asset in our progression as individuals?

I do not love these actors as these characters, but what can you do?

Jo does eventually find her compliment in a really lovely gentleman named Professor Baehr.  He possesses the strengths she lacks and she provides for his deficiencies.  They form a partnership that is stronger together than  either of them were on their own.  And almost it is enough to help me overlook the creepiness of a 40+ year old man courting a 22 year old girl.  Almost.

The Objective Value of Strength or How I Discovered I Am Just Like Spock

So I had an interesting experience last week and I'm not entirely sure what to think of it so I'm going to post it here in the hopes that someone will have some sort of revelatory insight to offer me.

I don't know if I had mentioned that the reason I have been able to go see ye olde therapiste is because my ward was covering the cost.  But with the decision to officially emigrate out of the old ward it became necessary to broach the topic of continued subsidization with the new administration.  

So last Wednesday I stopped in to visit with my new bishop.  Aside from a brief handshake and hello my first Sunday, this was my first introduction to him.  After the obligatory "getting to know you" chitchat I broached the topic of Alan and my enigmatic therapy.  

It must here be noted that I have remained somewhat ambivalent about my therapy with Alan.  The man himself is perhaps the second sweetest and most earnest man I've ever met (the first being my Russian 101 professor Tony Brown).  But I have struggled to quite get a handle on his therapeutic style from the beginning.  And when I brought this up with him again during our last session we momentarily touched on the possibility that his laid-back style wasn't quite right for me.  But every time I've considered that idea I've left the thought with a vague feeling that I should give Alan's style a little more time.

Which brings us back to my meeting with the bishop.  When asked how I felt therapy was going for me I completely unsurprisingly struggled with my answer.  Which is why I was so surprised by the visceral reaction I had to my bishop's statement that he thought I should "give Alan the boot".  I immediately started feeling anxious and a little panicky.  When I finally made it out to my car I started crying.  Driving from church back home I proceeded to have a micro anxiety attack.

I must, however, again pause my narrative for another bit of background.  I had spent some time last Sunday considering my relationship with the divine and I had come to the conclusion that, while I have a somewhat unorthodox (for a Mormon) relationship with God, my personal system of applied belief rather skips over the idea of Christ.  When I pray I pray to God; in the idea of heavenly communication God is the one I am talking to and listening for.  It occurred to me, then, that perhaps I should look into cultivating some sort of direct relationship with Christ.  Mormon theology places him as the intermediary between God and man, after all.  

So, returning to last Wednesday night, as my anxiety persisted it seemed as good an opening as any to begin that cultivation.  So I sat down on my futon and said a quick prayer.  It consisted essentially of me telling him I was upset, I wasn't completely sure why, and I needed some help.  And in a true New Era moment, I can honestly say that I stopped crying almost instantly.  

I cannot say, however, that I necessarily felt comforted.

What I felt, for lack of any better way to explain it, was more like myself.  

See, the thing about me is that pretty much all of my adult life I've felt like I'm really two very different, almost opposite, people crammed together into one.  One half of me is the person who comes up with the topics for most of my blog posts--all about my insecurities and worries and struggles.  It is the part of me that is responsible for the infamous anxiety.  It is all sensitivity, passion, insecurity, and fear.  Fear of so very many things.  The other half of me is the one who takes all those whinging neurotic blog topics and writes them either with detached analysis, or makes them funny.  In simplest terms, it is the Vulcan part of me.  Because I just realized literally as I was writing that sentence that I'm basically Spock, divided between emotion and reason.  This second half of me is logical and reasonable and calm.  And most of all, it is strong, with a burdensome strength that never allows me a moment of cathartic emotional weakness because it sees no purpose in such indulgences.  At the end of our meeting the Bishop mentioned how surprised he was at the topic of our conversation; I was much too calm to suffer from anxiety.  He said this to me as I was in the initial stages of an anxiety attack.  

Which is what I mean when I say that, after I said my prayer, I felt more like myself.  I stopped crying.  I stopped panicking.  I stopped caring at all about what would happen if I stopped going to see Alan because I knew that I would be fine either way.  Because I'm always fine.  I felt, for a little while, like half of myself...wholly.  If that isn't too confusing.

It is important to note here that the motivation in many of my decisions lately has been a desire to better balance of these two halves of myself.  Not to be too dramatic about it, but I feel like the emotion and sensitivity of the one is being slowly smothered beneath the rigid stoicism of the other.  Only the most negative aspects of that part of me make it out at this point.  The insecurities, anxieties, and fears.  They are the only parts strong enough to break through.  So, as I said, I'm trying to find some way to relieve some of the pressure.  Because sensitivity and emotion aren't bad, are they?

And that is why I am confused.  Did I receive a true answer to my prayer?  To a person who can't say with surety that she's received an answer to her prayers since she was a teenager, that would be momentous.  But if I did, what does it mean that that answer was to be snapped back into my Vulcan self so hard the other self was practically gone (if just for a while)?  Have I been working toward the wrong goal?  Instead of trying to cultivate a balance between Vulcan and Human should I simply be striving to become pure Vulcan?  

I honestly don't know.  I'm hoping that one of you will have an idea that will help me to make some sense out of it all...

Arithmetical Theologic Pedagogy

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong.  No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. -Terry Pratchett

Tonight I went to institute.  First time probably this year.  The lesson was essentially about getting your priorities sorted.  It was based on this conference talk about refocusing on the spiritual rather than the temporal.  The teacher took the idea a different direction, focusing instead on media consumption.

Overall the lesson was fine.  But I had a problem with one of her final statements.  She said she hoped that we all felt a little chastised by the lesson.  She referenced some quote about how if we aren't repenting every day then we aren't doing our best so we should all remember that and bring our A-game.  Aside from her use of the phrase "bring your A-game" pretty certainly placing her forever beyond my social circle, I was more annoyed with her stated hope that her lesson had made us all feel chastised.

Contrast that sentiment with the lesson I got on Sunday.  Relief Society was mercifully changed into a combined special meeting with our Stake President, who had been invited by our bishop to share with us a compressed version of his bishop training program.  Fun fact:  in real life our stake president works as an addiction counselor.  I really really appreciated everything he had to say, but what is relevant to this post is when he said that the best and, indeed, only way to fight darkness is not to try to remove the darkness, but to add light.  Though he is not the first person to characterize things in such a way, he still struck a chord with me.  I realized that darkness is an absence and you cannot remove an absence.  All you can do is fill it.

Which brings me back to what bothered me about our institute teacher's chastisement comment.  At first I thought I was annoyed because she was telling me I need to repent.  But that wasn't quite right, because she's right, I DO need to repent of many things. I am all too aware of that fact.  Rather, it was her blatant negative angle.  She hoped, not that her lesson had inspired me to do better, but that it had chastised me for not doing well enough.  It felt to me that she was attempting to remove the darkness rather than add light.

I have had this debate with some of my friends and I understand that some people respond well to negative motivation.  So I suppose what she said was a perfectly legitimate sentiment to express because it was effective for some members of the class.  But I have to wonder...while negative motivation works for some people, I would imagine that positive motivation works for all people.  Is that incorrect?

Telling me that I should feel bad for not "bringing my A-game" implies that my failure with whatever principle you're talking about is based on complaisance and laziness.  For every simple principle that one person writes off as a theological gimme, there is another person for whom it stands as an insurmountable obstacle.  For that person it is at best insulting and at worst actively damaging to tell them that their failures are due to laziness.  We all have our darkness, even if it isn't all in the same place for each of us.  That is, after all, the entire point of our lives.  The darkness may have got there first, but we strive to bring in the light to overcome it.  To fill it up.

So this is my friendly reminder to myself and to you and to that institute teacher who will never read this blog post.  This is me reminding us all to use positive motivation.

Let's add more light.