Lessons from life
Not a code post
I am slack about things like maintaining a blog, as you would have noticed from the gap between posts. I can come up with valid excuses, such as my wife and I having our first child, but it would still just be an excuse. I have kept meaning to get back into this, but my myriad of half finished projects never seemed to warrant it.
Funnily enough, I am drawn here, compelled, to write this post, not for a project but for something I am not good at, something I endlessly struggle to comprehend and master, and that is being human.
Warning
It is 3am in the morning, and my mind is racing so fast, and I am trying desperately to make this post make sense, but it is likely to be long. Thankfully I am only really writing this for one person, I don't care what others think or if they can be bothered with this post.
A stereotypical nerd
All of my life I have struggled to fit in socially, my mind treats everything like a puzzle to be solved. This is great when it comes to grappling with a new technical concept, but it is less effective when trying to understand social situations.
You end up finding yourself awkward, not keeping up with the subtext and generally retreating into yourself. On the rare occasion you might find a like minded person who is ok, possibly even happy, to spend hours discussing the strengths and weaknesses of one programming paradigm over another. Or maybe get into a discussion about determinism vs free will and not have to discuss the mundane that seems to be the social capital of everyday conversations.
That is me, so what comes next is a collection of lifetime experiences and a slowly dawning realisation that kept me awake tonight.
What is in a date?
Did you notice the date on this post, does it have any significant meaning to you? Not to me.
Sure, I know what the date is, I can recall basic facts like that, but it doesn't mean anything to me. It takes my ever patient wife to subtlety hint as we go to bed that she has plans that are a secret for tomorrow. Ugh, I failed at being human once again, I knew the date was coming, but once again I assigned no value to it and lost track of it.
I need to acknowledge my wonderful wife Mindy here. She is beyond belief thoughtful that even after the hint, she lets me know she doesn't expect anything (and honestly means it) and that she is only really doing something because it is Leila's first valentines (Leila being our 3 month old baby, if you hadn't guessed...)
Leila
We had wanted children for a while now, and now that we have one, I only wish I did it sooner. My little girl brings more of my human side out than anything else in life.
Once you get that first attempt at a smile, the first half giggle, you find yourself bending over backwards to get another. I have become a master at pulling faces and poking out my tounge, whatever works, I am addicted and love getting that daily hit of adorable little person.
So I am up at 1:30 to feed this little girl, and she is being adorable just drinking her bottle. Her eyes are scanning the ceiling, looking at the light show of stars we have projected in her room.
She is growing up and being easier to work with, she goes to bed without the slightest trouble, and ironically I find myself unable to fall back to sleep. Instead I become reflective, and think of a couple we know, distant friends if you will.
E & M
I'm generally a private person, I prefer to stay in the shadows and hate when someone shines a light on me without my consent, so in that vein I am just going to refer to these friends as E & M.
Mindy (wife) is an American expat, we met online and she moved here so we could be together. One day early in our marriage, we went to a get together of other American expats, so Mindy could talk with others about missing home, and to have a night where her accent wasn't the minority in a room.
We sat across from a more mature couple, both Americans who had moved to Australia to live. To their left (my right) sat E & M, two young women around the same age as Mindy and myself.
I don't know how it started, but I entered into a debate with the guy across from me, and easily enough it was about gay marriage. Not that E & M bought it up, they were there like Mindy and myself, as E had just moved to Australia to be with her new found love M.
As I said in the opening, I am not good in social situations, but if you get me started on something I am passionate about, I lose my sense of inhibition. I have a strong sense of equality and fairness, so when the topic came up, I opened up and put up a good fight.
Sure I would like to say I did it to defend the nice people I had just met that had a similar story as to my own, but to be honest it was all about me. It was me believing I was right, and that this older, more conservative person simply needed to be corrected in his world view (did I mention I was young, and idealistic to think that a well placed argunment could help someone see the error of their long held beliefs?).
E & M were nice people, and as the man's wife wisely manouvered her husband away from me, we got to have a good conversation sharing our similar histories of falling in love with people half a world away and trying to make it work. We never became close friends, they lived a while away from us, and all four of us are somewhat introverted, but Mindy kept up with them on Facebook, so we still have some on going connection.
When we met them, E was pregnant and the two were starting a family together. A few years later, M fell pregnant and I remember Mindy relaying her frustration about being called a new mum.
M would argue back that she already was a mum, E & M had raised a beautiful little boy together and he was their son, not just E, but M's as well.
Reflections
You might be wondering why such a long detour, but it all ties together as I was feeding Leila, and feeling a pure love for that little person, my mind bought up M's story. As luck would have it, she had her baby days before Leila, so as Mindy posts endless pictures of our little girl, so does M (and so did E & M for their first child).
Everything started to connect in my head, I had a strong sense of empathy for M. I imagined if I was to be told Leila wasn't mine, and I saw myself reacting just as strongly as M did.
Leila smiles at me when I enter the room, she giggles for me when we play games and she pokes her tounge out with a smile in response to my own. She is every bit my child, no matter if biology said differently.
This is where my mind started, and didn't stop. It raced and raced, keeping me awake.
I relived that debate, fought it again but with the strength of conviction borne from emotion instead of moral righteousness. I recalled the faces of E & M and saw them in a new light.
They didn't just have a background story in common with us, they shared something much deeper, they were clearly in love. It not something that is easy to describe, but when you see a couple sitting next to each other, and you see the body language, you see it.
In reliving that debate, I saw them next to each other, in love. They were, just like Mindy and I, picturing a future together, hoping it would last, hoping they would be able to handle tough times ahead.
They weren't special, they weren't a "lesbian couple", they were simply a couple, young and in love with each other, risking everything in the belief, hope and dreams of a long future together.
Love & Marriage
I have been married over 7 years now, and I like to think I have grown and learned a few things along the way. I have come to realise that the strength of a marriage is accepting your parnters faults because they are doing that for you.
If you had to defend your love for them, you might find it hard to tally up, to put it in formal writing, to make a pros & cons checklist that could be audited. You can't explain it, but there is an indescibable feeling that you don't want to lose.
You simply feel safer and more content when you are near them. Sure there are times when you need time to yourself, but you never need or want to stay away too long, you need to be close to them, even if it is just sitting in the same room, quietly doing your own thing.
The two halves of marriage
As I laid awake, with these thoughts racing through my head, I came to the conclusion that there are two halves to marriage. There is a legal side that determines how you are treated in legal and governmental proceedings and there is a more touchy feeling side where it announces to the community at large, what your intentions are towards each other.
I have heard the argument before that gay people should be pragmatic and settle for getting civil unions recognised by the law, but it misses the point. In the pragmatist view, you get 90% of what matters, and in the end who cares what others think, your love for each other doesn't depend on community acceptance.
But the problem with that view is they have the ratio completely flipped. In the true sense of marriage, you don't get married for the benefits, you get married so you can shout from the rooftops and state clearly what your intentions are towards your partner.
You aren't just a couple dating, or casually seeing each other, you want people to recognise without having to ask, that you envision a shared future together where you both get old and stick through difficult times to share your life together.
The legal stuff is still important, if your partner has been rushed to the emergency room, you do not want to have to beg and plead to be at their bedside, if they were to die, you do not want to fight a legal challenge from your inlaws over the custody of your child. It is important, but it is not the reason a couple in love gets married for.
I know when I propposed to Mindy I wasn't thinking of these things or the potential tax benefits that might come from being married. We are long past the times of marriage as a means to join empires. When I decided to ask Mindy to marry me, all I was thinking of was a future where we got to be together, to spend the rest of our lives supporting each other and sharing in common joys such as our amazing little girl.
The definition of marriage
As all of this came together in my head as I struggled to sleep, it occurred to me that until now I had never fully empathised with E & M or other couples in their same position. The person I was debating, kept coming back to the definition of marriage and at the time my rebuttle was that the definition has been in flux throughout human history. But that is as sterile a response as his position, both ignored the true meaning of marriage, at least to a couple in love.
When you first say the words "in sickness and in health, to death do us part", you don't fully understand the gravity of them. Even being as introverted as I am, I have still seen enough relationships to know what I do and don't want from one.
I see the ones that have lasted, and the ones that have fallen apart. The qualities that I see as being important are the ones that embody the words we say on the day we get married.
I see my mother sticking by my dad who is wasting away from a life of smoking, and in return I see him pushing past his own illness to let mum know he still loves her.
I think of my mum's recently passed uncle. Born in a different time, his life partner was always described as a friend. Yeah, a friend that he lived with into old age, a friend that he stuck by and who stuck by him as they both deteriorated from old age.
I think of my brother inlaw's parents, when his mum got alzheimer's but his dad stuck with her, he still clearly loved her as she uncontrollably forgot him.
This is why I married Mindy, not for the legal concessions that come from it, but because I see a life that is only complete if I see it to the end with her. I think of this, and then I think back to the debate and think of E & M.
The stubborn, conservative old guy was unable to think beyond simple terms of "one man, one woman", he was unable to empathise with the young couple, to see that they loved each other.
Would it last, who knows? No one ever knows going into a relationship, you go in hoping and try to make it work.
E & M are no different, they are no special case, they are just a couple in love and looking towards a shared future together.
Coda
This is hardly a conventional love letter, but I know Mindy and I like to think she knows me. I hope she can see past the rambling, and my focus on others, to see the underlying message.
I love you, and want to grow old with you. I hope we never stop working on making this work, because we have a good thing here.
<3 Natnan