I recently started driving my brother’s car, which has a built-in GPS, so one day -- just for the hell of it -- I decided to test it out and intentionally made multiple wrong turns to see if it would be able to put me back on track. I was fascinated by how quickly it was able to automatically recalculate the route when I missed a turn. More so, it even had insight into my surrounding areas, such as, if I was crossing over a body of water. What a handy little helper, I thought. If only we were born with a built-in GPS ourselves, so we could confidently traverse through life with a companion to point us in the right direction.
So in lieu of a GPS, we rely on other things to help guide us… things like our instinct, sixth sense, or just a “gut feeling.” But in spite of that, we sometimes mess up – either because that little voice inside of our head failed us, didn’t speak up, or was simply muffled by us. Like anyone else, I’ve made some bad choices in life – even some really you-saw-that-coming type of dumb mistakes. Last night was no exception. The scene: a swanky hotel bar. The cast: an old crush -- smart, suave, handsome, and successful. Oh, the problem, you ask? He’s now newly married. Three drinks into the night, both of our moral compasses were pointing about 10 degrees off of north. Before your minds completely get flushed down the gutter, let me pause and say: nothing happened. Ahh – the timeless proverbial phrase. How do I exactly define “nothing?” Well, that might be a blog for another day. Suffice it to say, I’m neither proud nor ashamed of the “nothing” that happened.
The night’s turn of events got me thinking about marriage and fidelity. While not all of us are subjected to recite our wedding vows in front of 25 million viewers, like our royal highnesses William and Kate, we do make a private commitment to our spouse to be forever loving, honest, and respectful. Or at least, we should. But if even Prince Charles and Princess Di can get divorced after a public grand ceremony, then we “common folks” are really no different. We’re all humans at the end of the day, brought together by the same temptations that surround us. And whether that temptress comes in the form of a pool boy, an intern (as our former President can attest), an escort, a nanny, or a colleague, it all boils down to one question: what do you do?
“Nothing,” in my case. Why? Aside from the obvious reasons, the fear of karma fought back any desires I had to do “something.” I’ve met and heard about guys like him before, and quite frankly, it scares me to know that there’s no sensor or radar that’s going to warn me whether my Prince Charming may be susceptible to cheating or lying -- nor is there a GPS device that's going to put us back on track if either one of us takes a turn for the worse. Granted, I have many preconceived notions of what marriage is like – or is supposed to be like – and I may be naïve in my thinking. Maybe all marriages aren’t built on mutual love, trust and respect. Maybe at some point you stop loving your spouse as much as you did the day you married them. Maybe your vows become nothing more than mere rehearsed spoken words. Maybe. All we can hope for is that, no matter who ends up in the driver’s seat, we never steer away from our ultimate destination of “’till death do us part.”
So in lieu of a GPS, we rely on other things to help guide us… things like our instinct, sixth sense, or just a “gut feeling.” But in spite of that, we sometimes mess up – either because that little voice inside of our head failed us, didn’t speak up, or was simply muffled by us. Like anyone else, I’ve made some bad choices in life – even some really you-saw-that-coming type of dumb mistakes. Last night was no exception. The scene: a swanky hotel bar. The cast: an old crush -- smart, suave, handsome, and successful. Oh, the problem, you ask? He’s now newly married. Three drinks into the night, both of our moral compasses were pointing about 10 degrees off of north. Before your minds completely get flushed down the gutter, let me pause and say: nothing happened. Ahh – the timeless proverbial phrase. How do I exactly define “nothing?” Well, that might be a blog for another day. Suffice it to say, I’m neither proud nor ashamed of the “nothing” that happened.
“Nothing,” in my case. Why? Aside from the obvious reasons, the fear of karma fought back any desires I had to do “something.” I’ve met and heard about guys like him before, and quite frankly, it scares me to know that there’s no sensor or radar that’s going to warn me whether my Prince Charming may be susceptible to cheating or lying -- nor is there a GPS device that's going to put us back on track if either one of us takes a turn for the worse. Granted, I have many preconceived notions of what marriage is like – or is supposed to be like – and I may be naïve in my thinking. Maybe all marriages aren’t built on mutual love, trust and respect. Maybe at some point you stop loving your spouse as much as you did the day you married them. Maybe your vows become nothing more than mere rehearsed spoken words. Maybe. All we can hope for is that, no matter who ends up in the driver’s seat, we never steer away from our ultimate destination of “’till death do us part.”
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1 comment:
I guess it helps to remember what the husband or wife is, a human being, a creature with hereditary, adaptive and educational components with a mind that changes as its experiences and learns and succeeds, fails and does nothing, every moment.
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