Married with Children

Hello everyone from California finally. I arrived in CA (and thus concluded my road trip) this past Thursday. It was a long drive and I hope I do not have to do it again anytime soon. So what have I been up to since I arrived? Well one I am crashing at my sister's place in San Pablo. I've been hanging out down in the south bay a few times. I went down there to see Superman Returns (pretty good in my opinion) and to attend Cyrus's kick ass 4th of July party. I also went down the day after I arrived to help Vishnu move out of his place. He was nice enough to give me his couches, lots of dishes, microwave, toaster, and deep fryer. So if anyone visits my new place, it will remind them alot of Vishnu and Percy's old place.

There are times in my life where I have realized I have gotten older, and thus transitioned to an older, presumably, more mature phase. For instance, I remembered that I may be getting too old for saturday morning cartoons is when I noticed all the kids in the commerials were younger than me (actually this happened when I was 23 - kidding). I remember when I realized that I was moving beyond being an undergraduate during my last quarter of my senior year when I was repeatedly annoyed by the sophomores and juniors in my marketing class and their inane discussions about what people in their dorms were doing for the weekend. I also realized I was far removed from college when I watched sports on TV and all the top flight players of any particular sport are all younger than me. So now I sense that I am entering another stage which can be defined by one word: marriage.

Whether it is going to Cheng and DJ's wedding next week, hearing the slew of engagement announcements from friends, former classmates and acquaintances, or convincing someone not to get engaged, the idea of marriage has been popping up a lot lately. I guess I should have expected it since many people do tie the knot in their late 20's/early 30's. Not that I am anti-marriage or anything. Being a child of divorce, I guess I am not nearly as pro-marriage as many others. I guess marriage to me is like ummmm...John Mayer. Like there are some super big John Mayer fans who love every song he sings. Me? I don't necessarily have anything against John Mayer, it's just that there would be probably many more bands and songs I would play instead of John Mayer. Unfortunately, this type of attitude has caused some people to call me anti-marriage. Now there are two types of pro-marriage people, the nice kind and the jerk kind. The nice kind are just optimistic about marriage and downplay the negatives of it and emphasive the positives. I once had one person say, "I don't know why people always point out the 50% of marriages that fail. They should focus more on the half that succeed." Actually the divorce rate I believe hovers around 43% currently. Back to the point, that it is the usual "the glass is half full, not half empty argument." To which I usually reply, "If you were presented with a long-term committment that required a huge investment of time, money, and emotional support and it had a 57% chance of succeeding, would you still do it?" Usually that quiets down the nice kind of pro-marriage folks.

Now the jerk kind of pro-marriage folks are a different story all together. They believe that marriage is the ultimate state of being in this plane of existence. A lot of traditional Asian parents think this way unfortunately. As in nobody could possibly be truly satisfied with their life unless they got married. I once argued with one person who believed that marriage was so great and the ultimate state which we must all achieve that he said that if people married more and divorced less, it would effectively wipe out crime, teenage pregnancy, poverty, drugs, and our poor school problems. His logic (if you can call it that) is that kids who have two parents and are not born out of wedlock would be far less likely to become deliquents, cause crime, or do all the bad stuff that consititute all the social problems in this country. (Yes I do know of the studies that say kids who grow up with two parents are less likely to engage in criminal behavior but not a single one of those studies ever suggested that their findings could be extrapolated to the extreme this jerkish fellow I was arguing with is advocating). Furthermore, this jerk said that finanical problems/stress and relationship incompatibility were not grounds for divorce and that "true" marriages should be able to withstand them. I am sorry if you got two people who are making minimum wage, struggling to pay rent, bills, and put food on the table, I would be glad if they didn't end up killing each other, let alone getting a divorce. Unfortunately the Bush Administration has provided funding to pilot programs that encourage poor people to get married as a way out of poverty and to get off welfare which is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. As said in the Frontline documentary I just linked to, instead of two poor people you got two married poor people.

Now I know most pro-marriage folks are not of the jerk kind but more the nice kind. But it still bothers me that there is their overarching view that being married is the most desired state of being in life. I can think of a lot things that can be possibly better than being married. For instance, being a rock star, a successful professional athelete, or a Playboy photographer. Not that these things are mutually exclusive but I would argue it would be a lot harder to be a both happily married and a wildly successful rock star, athelete, or Playboy photographer. Which is why I think it is crap with all these books and people advocating that people should get married younger. Other than having a truly laughable belief system, I don't think the Mormons are right for encouraging people to get married so young. Of nearly the two dozen or so mormom people in their 20's that I have met, I have met two that were not married or engaged. And both told me that they were feeling major pressure to get hitched. To me, your college years, the rest of your 20's and hell even your early 30's, are for exploration and youthful behavior, which consists of making plenty of mistakes and taking some risks. Getting married young sorta takes that away. Marriage is about stability and consistency, two things that don't really mesh well with making mistakes, making dumb choices, taking risks and hopefully learning more about yourself from such behavior.

One thing that annoys me is that is that whole marriage business is all these people who say their spouse has made them happy. Which seems to infer that they were unhappy when they were not married (aka single). To me, noone else can make yourself happy. One must allow themself to be happy in the first place. Nobody else can do that. Ideally, people should be happy with themselves and their spouse should be more happy on top of that. So Jerry Maguire was wrong to say, "You complete me." He should have said, "I am already complete but you have made me realize that by being with you and I become a better person, and thus more complete than I already am."

So I guess I better wrap this up. More than likely, I will be hearing and encountering this marriage business for the next few years so I guess I should get used to it. For those you interested in learning more marriage, your local library has many interesting books on the subject. Also of interest, is Po Bronson's marriage blog which analyze the factors that contribue to successful and/or failing marriage. It has some surprising answers. Some of you may remember Po Bronson as the author of best selling books, the First 20 Million is Always the Hardest and The Nudist on the Late Shift. Then he gave up writing actual books and thus just went around interviewing people, putting their answers in a book, and then making boatloads of money off of it and ending up on Oprah.

Anyway, that is all from me now. Until next time, peace.