What’s Important
December 16, 2017 – As we sat on the warm Florida beach, trying in vain to lengthen summer by just a few more days (it didn’t work – it snowed at home while we were away), I read a bunch of novels, as I do when not gazing at the ocean.
Husband and I both do love gazing at the ocean.
Among the novels, there was one in the romance category that had the struggling, overwhelmed, wonderful woman rescued from all her troubles by the ridiculously rich, but also wonderful, guy. Those ridiculously rich-heart of gold guys are a dime a dozen in romance novels, aren’t they? (Check me, I had a few left over metaphors from my novel reading.)
It got me to contemplate how we choose our mates. (I also had Steve Harvey’s “Straight Talk No Chaser – How to Find, Keep and Understand a Man” in my kindle. The New Yorker magazine described his first between-the-sexes book, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man”, as “useful for fourteen-year-olds”. Haven’t read that one yet, either. I am just SO curious. More later, maybe.) Anywho…
As usual in these contemplations, I started with myself. How did I choose my mate? What did I have in my list of must-haves, all those years ago? And here’s the kicker: what if the ridiculously rich guy had come along to rescue me with all his money…which of the things on the list would I have been willing to sacrifice? Aha!
How about you? Did you settle? Did you settle for the rich guy or gal and give up on finding someone who…what?
That list of must-haves starts with physical attraction, I suppose. Are you willing to date someone who’s yucky-looking, if he or she drives up in the world’s sexiest car, in my opinion, the Audi R8? (Look it up, it’s under $200k!) If you believe in traditional gender roles, how about a guy who couldn’t change the oil in his car or change out a light switch? Or a gal who said she couldn’t cook? Or couldn’t stand to do laundry? (Substitute your expectations here.) If you have all the money in the world, you can afford to have someone change your oil, do your simple electrical, be your chef, and do your laundry for you. So are those things important, really?
What about the stuff on the list that you can’t buy? Isn’t that where the important items on the list of must-haves really are? How about that sexiness/attractiveness thing? How about your potential mate is kind, friendly, helpful, believes or doesn’t believe in God like you do, does or doesn’t want children like you do? They laugh at your jokes, they’re sporty or not as you prefer, they think what’s important (science, for example, in our case), is as important as you do.
Those things can’t be bought. The millionaire can bring along the bucketloads of bucks but dollars don’t make anyone friendly or helpful, or lead them to share your sense of humor, or be interested in getting on the tennis court or golf course with you.
I can hear what you’re thinking, yes, of course, you can have your own interests! And you can develop an interest in lots of new areas that your mate introduces you to! Art, theater, music, monster trucks, astronomy, model trains (not really – just kidding!), maybe religion, maybe volunteer work. Maybe what you thought was your line of work, turned out not to be. We pick up and discard interests all through life. But those foundational traits and similarities are mostly built-in for the long haul.
Yet sometimes tricky things out of our control happen to change some of those traits. Over time, we change, even if we’re not trying to. I was very involved in sports until just a handful of years ago. VERY sporty. Lots of sports with the husband. But time ticks by and may take some of those shared athletic traits away from you, if you’re the average aging athlete. I can’t do what I once did – even though I still want to. Things change. And no knee replacement or even minor surgery is going to give it back to me. Yes, I’m ticked off. But that’s part of the deal, things and people change.
Unfortunate life events may turn a good conservative into a good liberal (my cousin when his son died). Some folks get older and just don’t laugh like they once did. And other changes occur that take away some of your kindness and friendliness and have you focusing on the current trials and tribulations of your own life.
We learn what’s important, I hope, before we make our choices for lifelong mates. And we grow and learn and we overlook our own and their infirmities. But we hope that the fundamental, original, attractive, important traits persist: please stay kind, stay friendly, stay helpful. Stay smart, be good to animals, keep laughing at my jokes, keep surprising me, and learn new stuff as long as you can!
