The One Avoiding the Unnecessary Rush

Life has an abundance of moments that give us wonderful emotional highs.

Like the first day of school. For many of us, this experience can be highly stressful as, for the first time, we leave the comfort of our parents' side and the familiarity of home. For others, it can be highlighted by the excitement of meeting new friends in a larger interpersonal setting.

Or how about the moment of having that first crush? It certainly brings with it a plethora of intense emotions that leave lasting memories in our brain. In my case, I remember the girl... and I still remember the feeling.

Other instances could be the time you perfectly executed a dance routine you practiced really intently with your family; or the time you got a special year-end bonus for doing such an excellent job at work; or the time you finally discovered and lived out your life's purpose. These bring us heightened feelings -- positive or negative.

We often refer to these times as moments where we have experienced varying degrees of the emotional rush. You know what I'm talking about. You have had your share of those in your lifetime, too.

But that's not what I'm actually going to talk about here. I have in mind another kind of rush. No, not the Australian actor. And nope, not even the one involving a search for gold. I'm talking about the one that involves fools. Because, as we all know, fools rush in.

In the last five years, there has been an increase of people chiming in, giving advice, suggesting, recommending and urging me to go ahead and tie the knot. "You're already at the right age," they'd say. Or "you need to settle down once your mind becomes stable." Still others would pipe in, "you're the remaining single guy among your friends. Don't you feel left out?"

My response to these kinds of unwanted platitudes would be any of the following: "Are you enjoying your marriage enough to recommend me to get into it?" "I don't really think age is the sole determining factor for entering a marital relationship. Let's try maturity and sober-mindedness!" "Marriage is not really for everyone. As good as it was intended to be and can be, there are some people who are not cut out for it." "So you got married at a young age. Good for you. It doesn't mean I should have married at a young age, too." And a host of other self-defending statements, which I would only say in my mind, by the way, since I am supposedly the self-proclaimed King of Politeness. (I wish some of those platitude-proclaimers would practice politeness once in a while. But I digress!)

Marriage.

IT IS NOT SOMETHING ONE SHOULD EVER RUSH INTO.

EVER!

It is something worth waiting for and contemplating on. It is one of life's biggest decisions and the most impactful of the ones we make.

You're not embarking on a 'feel-free-to-quit-anytime-you-feel-like' kind of journey; you're supposed to be in it for the long, hell-or-high-water haul. It's sad to think that some people seem to think that there's an escape clause included as they jump into the marital bandwagon, thinking perhaps they could just abandon ship later on when the relationship hits a wall. (Oh, wait! Divorce! Annulment! Separation! . . . Murder?)

You're not just exposing your own self to the mortal danger of emotional hurt; you enter it with another person in tow. It's not just your own heart you're putting on the line here; your spouse is just as exposed as you are. That's another heart you run the risk of breaking along with your own.

You're not just going to be navigating through the intricacies of the man-woman, husband-wife dynamic; you will someday bring children into the mix. And they're nothing you should ever take lightly... or for granted. Raising them up requires a heart bigger than the I-ME-MINE.

To me, there should be a lot of preemptive contemplation involved when we consider the prospect of marriage. In fact, one should do the contemplating even before getting into any serious dating or courting relationship.

Our line of questioning should be "Am I responsible enough to care for and love another person?"; "Do I understand the purpose for the institution of marriage?"; "Am I willing and able to waive my rights, comforts, wants and needs to give way to someone else's?"; "Have I fully grasped the concept of 'in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, 'til death do us part'?"

These are actually some of the thoughts that have been ruminating in my head in the years that I've become an eligible bachelor. My answers to these questions have both made me grateful that I didn't wed at an early age, and careful as I consider the prospect of entering that covenant relationship. I know marriage is not a walk in the park. I know it requires a lot of work. And frequently asking and answering these questions myself helps me assess my readiness for the requirements for marital responsibilities.

I've also been around numerous married couples in my lifetime (my own parents included) and I've seen how they carry these said responsibilities. I've seen how devoted couples work at making their relationship work at any cost, and it inspires me to do the same or better someday. On the other hand, I've also seen detached couples derail each other intentionally or otherwise, and it breaks my heart to see how that detachment impacts them... and their children.

My eyes are wide open and I've already shelved my rose-colored glasses. I am a proponent for marriage: the beauty and the beast of it all. And my opinions here are not against people who are getting or have gotten married. I'm speaking out about those who rush into it and to those who push people into it. I'm sounding off toward people who endorse marriage flippantly like it was some disposable, dollar store purchase, while being inescapably miserable in their own.

I am 42 years old. Single for two decades now. Waiting for the right time to get married -- if that should come at all. For me, marriage is not the main goal or end goal of life (at least not in mine). I've done my share of rushing into things in my juvenile years and I've paid big time for a lot of those things. Man, did I pay! Consequences really teach a lot of (painful and regretful) lessons.

Two of those important life lessons have helped me a lot along the way since having learned them.

First: HASTE MAKES WASTE.

I learned that if I rushed into something without properly (or at least adequately) knowing what I was getting into, I would end up squandering an opportunity or missing out on the joy resulting from doing things the right way. Whether that was about purchasing an expensive pair of earphones when I could have gotten a cheaper pair with the same quality, or pursuing a relationship I thought was "the right one" without heeding wise counsel and ending up failing at it, the principle is the same.

Second: GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT.

Clearly not a maxim espoused by a lot of the relationship-hungry youth of this generation, this one is actually quite true. I've tasted and seen it for myself. When I think about this adage, I am frequently reminded of that old video documentation of kids subjected to the 'Marshmallow Test'. In this experiment, children were told to sit in a room with a single marshmallow on a plate. The adult conducting the experiment would promise the child that they would be given another marshmallow if they could wait and not eat it the first one while waiting for the adult to come back after leaving the room to get the second marshmallow. The kids who didn't eat the first marshmallow and waited for the second got two instead of one. Patience is rewarded.

Sometimes we miss out on more and better because we're too impatient to get there and too short-sighted to see that what we already have or are eaager to have might not be the best we could ever get.

So, consider me the kid who's still waiting for the second marshmallow. The one who is dodging the unnecessary rush.

After all, don't the kids these days say Y.O.L.O.?