Just another word for nothing left to lose

Married people tend to think everybody should get married. Parents think everybody should have kids. Just the way it is, and knowing this doesn’t help avoiding the stereotype. This isn't an attempt to convince anybody to have kids, and please smack me in the head if we ever become those people.

This post was inspired by yet another This American Life episode, as well as other themes that have come up recently. In the next few weeks we’ll focus on either the grueling details of what life is like for a 37-week pregnant woman and her bewildered husband, or stupid dog jokes. Let me take a minute to digress.

The show was about the struggles couples have with monogamy, the difficulties over time, and the rewards for pulling it off. To boil it down to a logical extreme, it’s about voluntarily giving up freedom, and why we so often choose to do it.

This from a guy that in all sense of the word knew what freedom is all about. Hate my job? I quit. Got bored? Go to a different country and start over. Want to work until 9:00 at night then drink until noon the next day? Can’t think of a reason not to. Doing this for long enough really crystallized what’s important, at least for me. Thank god Corrie hadn’t married somebody else before I came back to the states.

To steal from a cheesy movie “Before Sunrise”, you’re stuck with yourself wherever you go. Go see a movie, and you’re there with yourself the whole time. Go to sleep and wake up to yourself. Can’t even take a shower without seeing yourself in the mirror when you get out. Perhaps after this relentless time always spent with yourself what is really called for is to forget yourself and focus on somebody else. After three years plus of marriage I can tell you, it’s so refreshing to devote yourself to somebody else, to really pour all your energy into doing a good job of trying to make them happy. Call it an atheist’s version of faith.

So knowing that we’re about to voluntarily give up our sleep, give up vacations, give up reading good books, eating out, going to the theater, give up so much more than we even know yet, I can’t wait until she’s here. It’s inaccurate to equate this to a trade off. “Sure you lose out on X, but at least you get Y.” It’s precisely because we’re going to be so needed that makes this so great, not in spite of it.