The Most Important Decision Ever?

When I tell people that I blog, most immediately assume that I take news stories, tear each to bits and pits while entering in my own (not so factually based) opinion. Because that is where a lot of bloggers exert their energy, it is what they have become known for. But up until now, I really haven't done anything too political or news worthy. However, I recently came across an article in The New York Times that I feel is worthy of extending the discussion, or "conversation," shall I say.

The article appeared under "The Conversation," the column that conservative-leaning David Brooks and liberal-leaning Gail Collins co-author in an attempt to bridge beliefs. The headline "Advice for High School Graduates" immediately drew me in; after all, I'm only two years out. Turns out, this article had nothing to do with jobs or college, as I expected. But it contained some of the most relevant information that I have been given, and not so very long ago.

Brooks had been charged with speaking to the graduating class at his former high school. At that point in a teenager's life, they are making huge decisions: where to go to college, what to major in, what organizations to become involved in.. And it seems that those decisions are immense at the time. They trump whatever is going on in life; and, two years later, I can attest that they still do. Upon meeting someone, the first questions I get asked are my school and major. In a few years, I imagine that question to have shifted to, "So, what do you do?"

But, in this article, David Brooks calls our culture out because we emphasize those (important, but not end-all, be-all) decisions, yet downplay the ones that will truly affect us in much deeper and long-lasting ways. He contemplates this paradox here:

"At the moment, I’m thinking of talking about the chief way our society is messed up. That is to say, it is structured to distract people from the decisions that have a huge impact on happiness in order to focus attention on the decisions that have a marginal impact on happiness.

The most important decision any of us make is who we marry. Yet there are no courses on how to choose a spouse. There’s no graduate department in spouse selection studies. Institutions of higher learning devote more resources to semiotics than love."

So why did this article get to me so deeply that I felt I just had to blog about it? Because this was advice that I had recently heard from someone that I deeply respected. At the end of this past semester, after taking a course so interesting it literally changed the way I look at the world, I heard the same advice. The course was essentially team-taught by a husband and wife, who are of the age to now be enjoying grandchildren. On the last day of class, when professors are typically cramming one last morsel of "knowledge" into students, we, instead, were eating cake and drinking milk and discussing marriage. Mrs. Sandy began by asking us what was the most important decision we would ever make.. and several pleased her by correctly answering marriage. Next, I listened as a seasoned woman in her second marriage told a group of green, know-nothing but think-we-know-it-all college students to contemplate that decision with more thought than any other choice of our life. That it would trump all the intelligence we are developing now. That if it wasn't right, it would cause more hurt than any job loss or failure. And as she said this, tears filled her eyes and her husband looked on with love and pride.

She proceeded to show us a book that she recommends for those making this decision, but what she had just told me was still ringing in my head. I could not believe that a college professor (albeit an utterly amazing one) had just said that. Tears honestly began forming in my eyes, before I realized what was happening. I was so touched by this conversation because no one had ever before said something like that to me; no one had stressed the importance of a spouse to me as I was busy stressing about classes, as I am currently stressing about graduate school that is over two year away!

And that is why I nodded my head over and over at David Brooks as I sat at my desk reading his article. It is also why I will forever remember by final class day of Sociology 307 and pass that advice on to those whom I will one day influence. Because this is a lesson worthy of repetition, even over the medium of a lousy blog.