Views on marriage

 

At a dinner with friends and the subject of marriage comes up. 

Nouha, an Australian lady of Lebanese origin, says she doesn’t believe in marriage. 

I agree, and chime in to say I believe marriages should have expiry dates.  Couples should decide, when they register, whether their marriages should expire after 10 or 20 years. 

Another friend Michelle then says the default should be 7 years.  And we segue off for a while into whether there is a biological basis for the seven year itch.

Straight Republican Jewish guy in the corner brings it back to marriage by saying, “What about the offspring?” and I counter with, you still need to support the children after a marriage ends.  You continue to love them and be there for them. 

At any rate, if you’re in a conventional marriage and you divorce, the psychological trauma of a nasty separation would scar the children even more.

This concept of a renewable marriage is already possible; it’s called a civil union and it’s not just for same-sex couples -- heterosexual civil unions are legally allowed in jurisdictions such as Quebec, New Zealand and Uruguay, apparently. 

Technorati tags: civil union, marriage, divorce

Four Hour Work Week

Reading this book now, and while there are large swaths of it that I don’t agree with, I like his idea of mini-retirements.  This is the idea that rather than working your ass off, hating life, and waiting for retirement when you can finally enjoy life, you should take annual mini retirements of one to three months.  He advocates that rather than playing tourist and just zipping through 12 cities in two weeks, we slow down and stay in one place, learn an art or a skill, and absorb the culture and ambience of a single country, perhaps even one city.  I like the elegance of that. 

I’m not sure I could survive not working for a few months per year; I am a workaholic after all, and it’s because I enjoy it, not because I have to.  Still, I can totally get with the idea of taking a month off and just vegetating in one place, treating it mentally like a retirement.

Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week.

Springtime in New York

Coming of age

I can still remember turning 30, mildly depressed that I had no car and no house.  I had a relationship that was going through a rough patch during that period, but at least I had a job that was secure and paid well.  That is, until the dotcom bubble burst a year or two later.  We Chinese people mark life progress by our possessions, so I recall being disappointed that I wasn’t as far along in the material sense as I’d liked. 

Now it’s ten years down the road.  I’ve got the requisite car and house.  Still have a secure, well-paying job.  The relationship has gone bust, with the accompanying angst and self-doubt.  I don’t feel particularly fulfilled, as if somehow my life is missing a compass.  My true north has not revealed itself, nor do I know what I should do to find my way as a human being. 

I sweat the big and small stuff.  I fret that our icecaps are melting and the polar bears are drowning, that the Maldives will be submerged in a few decades.  I fret that Jews and Arabs are still killing each other in the Middle East, that terrorism threatens all of us on a daily basis.  I fret that my job, while interesting, doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

I wonder if making money is all that matters, yet I enjoy the trappings of affluence immensely: dining at quality restaurants, trips to exotic places, shelling out big bucks for the latest gadgets.  I fret that I am a hypocrite. Are these the typical thoughts of a Gen X-er? In a year’s time will I shave my head and join a commune in India? I wonder if there are other middle-aged men out there that feel the same.  What do they do when they have these thoughts?

Technorati Tags: angst,middle-age,Generation X

Back from New York

Back in Hong Kong after a long 15-hour flight from New York, where I spent a terrific week with someone special.  We did the NY thing: spent a weekend in the Hamptons, saw Broadway musicals, picnicked in Central Park.  New York is one of those overpowering cities that feels, in spite of yourself,  like a third player in your relationship, especially if only one of you lives there.  It’s iconic, brimming with personality, larger than life.  I find myself mentally subtracting NYC from the equation when I assess what’s going on, so I’m not unfairly affected by its power.  Like it says in that song, I don’t want to be caught between the moon and New York city, I want to make sure it’s real.

Days in Montauk

Should you fix yourself before dating?

Had lunch with my lesbian friend “L” yesterday, when we talked about her girlfriend troubles.  She had recently met and fallen in love with a girl in her late twenties, who, according to third-party accounts (I have yet to meet her), turned out to be somewhat hard to handle.  Among other things, she wouldn’t let L go out with her friends, apparently causing her social life to take a dip. Yet they are clearly deeply in love and seem very happy together.

This got me thinking…do we have a duty to become reasonably sane, well-adjusted beings with a minimum of dysfunction before we release ourselves into the dating pool? By bringing unnecessary baggage into a relationship, are we sabotaging our chance at happiness? Or, as they say, love conquers all, so true love means accepting a person for who they are, warts and all? 

Perhaps it’s impossible to judge when, if ever, you are ready, so you might as well dive in and trust that love, and life, will take care of things.

Technorati Tags: lesbian,friendship,relationships,dysfunction

What religion?

On my Facebook I list myself as a secular humanist, but like many people on occasion I wonder if those folks that believe in a singular “cosmic energy” have a point.  I recently reconnected with a business associate from over ten years ago. This is a person I hold in high regard so his opinion matters to me. He’s a devotee of the Bahai religion, which believes that all religions worship the same god. Seeing his unwavering adherence to his faith made me take another look at the Bahai religion. But I’m probably too steadfast an atheist to really change.

Technorati Tags: religion,faith,Bahai,humanism