Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride

 It's probably a good thing to go to a wedding every year or so. Especially if you're married. It helps ground you in the conventions that are part of your own life, even if you have been ignoring them for months at a time. 

Starting from those promises about sickness and health, till death do you part. Turns out that it's not something to be entered into lightly. Connecting up two lives is a whole lot more complicated than they make it look on TV. 

I have often spoken about how weddings and funerals aren't really for the people in the box. They are for the people standing outside, or sitting in those uncomfortable chairs. They are the ones taking it all in. Once upon a time, I was an uninterested bystander. I attended a fair number of nuptials and looked on them as the pregame before the big party afterward. The ceremony didn't seem like that big a deal, since it was mostly a dress-up gig that required sitting or standing still while someone else delivered all the best lines. 

I can remember in my twenties making a snap judgement about a friend of mine who got married when she was nineteen. To say she "had to" get married would paint a picture outside the real lines. She was anxious to be somewhere else and as it turned out, she got just that. She ended up having four kids and living in various places across the globe with her Army husband. They remained married to this day. By contrast, the friend who got married after he had launched his career as an electrical engineer settled down with his college sweetheart and had their own brood. They are no longer married. 

While I watched the two twenty-somethings professing their love for one another in front of a chapel of onlookers, "witnesses" we were called, I considered my responsibility to the vows that they were making. Part of me reflected on that wedding so many years ago that worked out just fine. At the time, it had even occurred to me to be the guy who stood up and objected to the proceedings. I'm glad I didn't. By contrast, it seemed like my engineer friend would have clear sailing until death parted him and his lovely wife. As I took in this most recent ceremony, I thought about their relative youth. How could they have any idea what they were getting themselves into? 

Nobody ever does. There are so many ways that life can bend and twist your path, no matter how certain you are that you have found your soulmate. It takes a lot of patience and determination beyond the aforementioned love and devotion. Some days are diamonds. Some days are rocks. Every time the sun comes up, I look at my wife and tell her that I love her. It's a reminder for us both. It's a very long road, and I like to think I'll be on it for a good long time. 

Still.