Tuesday, March 15, 2011

What We Put it Through...Part 2

Another argument I hear a lot about why people choose not to marry is how marriage seems to change the way we treat each other. This argument is crap on a stick.

Of course marriage should change the way you feel, the way you act, the way you carry yourself. It should change the way you interact, it should change the way you relate. It should change everything about you, for the better. But mostly, it should intensify your commitment to your partner. So why doesn't it? Well, simply put, we are becoming worse and worse people by the year. By the day, even.

Let me explain.

As the years go on, for some reason, we stray more from the conventions of wisdom. We become convinced of our own wisdom. We've come to a place where, because of the way we have continued to "advance", we have become less honorable. Think about it. People break up over text or Facebook. We have people constantly cheating on their partners. We have become a society that takes the easy way out. Why would any of us think that we have anything right?! Because, as I have said before, we have erased the guilt. The guilt used to be a guard in the tower purposely missing, but coming close, to let us know we were overstepping our boundaries. But guess what, we fired back, took the guard out, and now the warning shots have stopped. Which is a relief to most of us. As we have become more politically correct, more technologically advanced, and overall more lazy, we have become stupid.

And, yes, I mean to offend. Why do we think that a commitment that is smaller (in terms of meaning) is any less of a commitment? Because of the legality? That's why you're supposed to take your time. Because of something else I'm not aware of? What is it? Will we continue to trick ourselves into thinking that not trying our best in every aspect of life is good enough? Guess what? It's not!

The only end we are achieving is settling for what we can get, not what we deserve. We are all deserving of at least some love and some self worth. But there is a large percentage of the population that don't feel that they are worth anything. Why? Because our parenting has failed. I believe it has been failing for years, and I believe that it has reached the point of failing when parents want to be their child's friend. I don't believe that being your child's friend is a bad thing as long as it is coupled with actually being an authoritative figure. Whether they like it or not, kids need discipline and structure. When they don't get it, they make up their own rules. Rules that never quite grow out of the childish stage. Then what do we have but children living as adults and scheming to create a world with child like rules.

I've grown quite sick of people not taking responsibility. Or not taking charge in their roles. I don't even have that many roles compared to some, and I feel like sometimes I take on too many roles for too many people. That's really the whole point of this rant anyway. To say that in the last 50 years, we have declined so rapidly as people, and our marriage statistics and current attitudes are very telling of how awful we have become in comparison.

All of that to say that we need to take more responsibility for ourselves and the people underneath our charge. Let's raise our kids to be respectful and productive members of society. Let's return to a time when what we did and how we did it mattered. Let's start paying what we owe and making this place better, not by some 70's hippy slogans, but by actual effort.

I'm challenging you all to do something better. Better than what we know of ourselves. I know that, for myself, there are a few people to whom I have been shirking some responsibility towards. I'm working on that. Let's say you help someone you might not otherwise help or go the extra mile just once in the coming week. Let's see what that does to our conscience, collective and individual. But it starts with the individual.