Merry and I's wedding has come and gone. And how? In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, one character asks another, "How did you go bankrupt?" His answer: "Gradually, then suddenly." I would say the wedding weekend arrived the same way, first drifting slowly closer in the fog of the indefinite future, then rushing by in a blur.
At this age, I find myself in agreement with the adage, "anything worth doing is worth doing well." And so, if we were going to have a wedding, my thoughts went, I wanted us to do it on our own terms. But weddings are complicated things, made more so by the pull of tradition, and the expectations of other people. My aim was perfection, and as the date approached, and time grew more scarce, a different reality came into focus. I tried to accept this, with imperfect results, but all I could do is try. It passed, and somewhere along the way, I came into a state of peace.
Again, I might take the time to stress, at this age. Who have I become? Does time make everyone a pragmatist? Perhaps. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, said, "If you're not making mistakes, you're not moving fast enough." I had always applied that quote to my life on the basis of my daily, even hourly productivity. Now I am starting to see it detached from time, attached instead to my progress as a human being. Inner refinement, that is, rather than outer movement - action for action's sake. Who cares when the lawn waits a couple extra days to get mowed? Nobody should hasten to accomplish busywork faster, but everyone should hasten to become the best, most fully-actualized person they can, while they can.
And so our wedding day has come and gone. Mistakes were made, yet it worked - all of it - and so if the mistakes did not harm it, then are they mistakes? I now don't think so - they were just some things that happened, amongst many things that happened, which added up to our wedding weekend. The biggest "mistake" of all, by the standards I would have judged it even a week before, were our vows. After all, if the ceremony is the core of the weekend, and the vows the core of the ceremony, then what could be more important to get right? We both wrote hasty vows near the last minute. Blasphemy!, I might have responded to the thought, even just a week earlier.
I told Merry a few weeks before the wedding that I suspected she saw the guests as the metaphorical anchor to the event, while I saw the ceremony as the anchor. It took the experience of the thing itself for me to see her viewpoint (though I still hold onto mine, as well). I simply cannot deny that almost all of the most important pieces of the weekend were shared with, and dependent on, friends and family. Those friends and family helped and supported us in dozens of ways, even as we may have failed to write vows until the day we would recite them, and then to a lesser quality than we might have with more time - our faults alone, and yet not something I can view as mistakes. After all, what vows could be more appropriate, given that we both understand that vows, by the nature of a living relationship, are always being written and re-written? Every time I promise myself to make myself better in some way for Merry's sake, I am writing a vow. As we conquer our limitations, and as we encounter new challenges, our sentiments will change, though hopefully our intention to serve each other as friends and partners will not. And so the vows we recited last Saturday are neither the first nor the last vows we will make to each other, but merely one day's snapshot of our intentions for that small, hazy portion of the future that we have tried to discern from here.
