Monday, March 23, 2009

The Nagging Wife

When you hear so many men talk about their wives you generally hear a reference to her nagging. Its so often about the "nagging wife" that all of the good stuff is hidden. Our distorted views of reality are so hard to overcome and it gets worse and worse with every passing moment.

For me, one of the things that I want more than anything is a wife and kids to love but anytime I mention it I generally end up hearing about how I don't want to get married and how my life is over when I do.... and it goes on from there. I suppose it's possible that I'm just a single guy and there is no way that I could ever begin to understand but I tend to think the problem is not with me. We think that everything is supposed to be just perfect and we have the right to get angry when things are not perfect but the reality is perfection is boring. If everything was perfect, there would be no excitement.

Let me tell you about my life. I own my own house and I run my own business and I have no one to tell me what to do. I do what I want when I want. I have the life that most people dream of having but like almost anything that anyone dreams of there is no reality mixed in with that dream. When people find out that I run my own business and I own my own house they think that I must be the happiest person in the world, however, reality is that it's not the case. In fact, there are so many times that I seriously debate looking for a job and giving up this self-employed thing. People fail to see that things like health insurance are luxuries to the self-employed and that is just one of the many things that someone with a job takes for granted. I live alone and I don't have anyone nagging me and therefore, I must be happy. Reality there is that part of the reason I want to get married is to have someone that will keep me in check. If you walk into my house right now you'll likely be crawling over stuff. While I have free reign over my house I lack any kind of motivation -- and that's a disaster for me and I'm sure many other people as well. To top that off, I have no set time that I need to be at work. There is no structure and to make it even worse, with the way my business is set up, set schedules would be tough to do. It sounds great to be able to wake up and decide to sleep in if you still feel tired but, again, there is no motivation. Why should I rush to get myself up and moving when I can go to the data center when I want? The problem is the sun starts setting and I'm still in bed. And people laugh at me. Oh they laugh. Everyone seems to think that if they were in my position they could do it so much better than me. Some might. Of course, it is true that the grass really might be greener on the other side.

The problem just might be that we're all losing sight of structure. We've seen the checks and balances disappear from our government and we see the mess that has been created along with so many other examples. In the movie "The Matrix", the agent explains to Neo that the first version of the matrix was programmed to be a perfect world but the humans couldn't deal with that. We can't. We really can't. A big reason of this is the concept of ying and yang. How can something be good if we don't first know what bad is? Even if there is a constant hum of something in your house you stop hearing and acknowledging it after some time but if you have something that constantly makes a different noise, you'll never get used to that. I guess maybe that's the true definition of a "boring life"?

As a society we need to start looking at some of the negative things as good things. No one wants to see the bad things or to deal with pain in so many situations but we really need to start respecting those bad things as something that will make us a better person and help us live a better life. I'm pretty sure this is a big part of why God created Eve. God said that Adam needed a helper and I think that became true when God gave us our own free will. We make a mess out of it but at least if there is more than one person working together there is a much better chance of things staying in check so please stop looking at your wives as just someone who nags you but, rather, realize that she is a gift from God to help you -- even when it doesn't feel like it.