When we imagine our lives in the long-term, we envision a certain layout of how things should gradually take shape. You go to college, you date, you start your career, and when all aspects of your life seem to fall into place, you get married. But what happens when the order of these life events shifts? What happens when you meet "the one" prematurely?
I embarked on a spontaneous excursion to a hookah bar a few days ago with some friends, looking for nothing more than a good time and an evening of relaxation. What we ended up experiencing was something much deeper.
The owner of the lounge, an expressive Lebanese man in his mid-forties, immediately caught our attention as he took our order. After a few huffs and puffs from our waterpipe, we decided to spark conversation.
What we quickly learned, was that the man was a former engineer for corporate America who had cut all ties to the corporate world in favor of a more laissez faire lifestyle that catered to his needs as well as the needs of others. He had given up a six-figure salary in favor of smoking hookah in a restaurant until two (and sometimes four) o'clock in the morning every day and night.
But he claimed that what made it all worth it was not just the relaxed nature of his new business venture, but the simple ability to be with his family and stop living the life he had felt expected to live. (It's worth mentioning that his daughter was our other server.) His culture and religion, he said, put emphasis not on money or extravagant lifestyles, but experiencing life with family - no matter what your social status. The traditional "American dream," as many like to refer to it, does not exist in his culture.
As it turns out, his romantic life is very much out of order by the standards of today's youth. He and his wife met in college when they were only 19, and were married at the same age.
"I saw my wife, and I thought ... why not?" he said.
The example served as something strikingly significant, not just because of the fact that they were married at such a young age, but because they were married at that particular age without any extenuating circumstances. I've witnessed people getting married at an early age, but always for various reasons. They lacked the stability to stand on their own feet, they found themselves "knocked up," or they married their high school sweethearts because they didn't think they had the energy to keep looking. None of these things appeared to be the case here.
To make things more interesting, he made a surprisingly strong case for why marriages in America seem to ... well, flounder. According to him, what makes marriages fail in our culture is our uncanny ability to plan everything that we do. We get married after we've experienced our "single selves" and move into a marriage thinking we can settle down but still live our lives as if we're single. In other words, we lack boundaries.
Now, as I look back on the conversation, I can't help but wonder how much we may or may not miss out on in the process of developing a "plan" for our lives. Do we miss out on the true loves of our lives, just because they don't fit into the blueprint we've constructed for our ideal selves? Have our own standards killed our chances of experiencing marriage in its most glorious form?
Rather than awaiting a life that we've dreamed for ourselves, it seems appropriate that we should stop waiting for our dream lives to come to fruition, and start embracing living the lives we've been given. If you happen to stumble upon someone you truly love at an unexpected point in your life, it might just be better to stop asking questions and start experiencing. And if at this point you still find yourself asking an overwhelming number of questions, ask yourself only one more:
"Why not?"
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