Weddings are triumphs of love
and hope over reasonable fears

By David McElroy · April 24, 2018

The world is a scary place today.

It’s always been a scary place, but we are more aware of the dangers than ever before. Several centuries ago, humans had to contend with disease and death and dangers, but those things seemed confined to a small area. They didn’t know what was going on elsewhere. Their village was their world.

Today, we worry about some madman blowing the world up with nuclear weapons. We worry about men with bombs who have no personal argument with us showing up in our cities and blowing us up. We worry about the erosion of culture and values and all sorts of things which people of the past didn’t even understand.

But despite all those things, we still fall in love. We still get married. We still raise children. Every single one of these things is a bet we place on a better future — not on the fear and despair which are so often on the lips of naysayers.

Every new marriage is a triumph of hope and faith about the future.

As I drove home from work this evening, I was next to a car on I-459 in Birmingham which had “just married” crudely scrawled on the side. Everything about it was a cliche. You’ve seen it a thousand times. But something about it made me feel warm hope inside — just as it always does.

The couple in the car looked happy. They appeared to be in their 30s. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

I know that will change, because troubles are common to all of us. They might end up unhappy. They might eventually divorce. They might have financial problems and fight. He might cheat on her. She might cheat on him. They might have a child die. They might deal with bankruptcy or death or war or natural disaster.

There are a million things that might go wrong in the future for them. But right now, they’re happy. They’ve each placed a bet on the other for the future. They’ve each said, “I choose to build my life around you.”

A completely rational person wouldn’t do any of these things. He wouldn’t marry unless it was for an alliance with someone with more resources. He wouldn’t have children. He wouldn’t do anything but provide for his own pleasures and build nothing for the future.

Instead, we’re wired to fall in love.

Love drives us to do all these things. Love drives us to trust another human and to place a bet on that person. And when that bet fails — as it often does — love causes us to place a bet on someone else — even when experience says, “You’re a sucker if you think it will be different.” Love causes us to have children and to nurture them. Love makes us work hard for their welfare and try to make the world better for them.

Yes, the world is scary. Terrible things might happen. Politicians will disappoint us. Evil and selfish people will hurt us. Even the people we trust will sometimes betray us.

But we’re wired for love. We keep coming back to love. We need love and understanding and intimacy. Despite a world that might otherwise make us decide to lock our doors and ignore everybody, love drives us forward to something better.

Love changes the world by making us act in irrational ways.

I don’t know the newly married couple I saw on the road this evening. I’ll never see them again. But in a way, they represent the best of all of us. They represent our willingness to suspend our fears and doubts and even nihilism. They represent our need for connection and emotional intimacy.

They represent the best in all of us, because they remind us that love changes everything — at least long enough for us to place bets on making the world a better place for our children.

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When Francesca Montanaro’s school shut down in March due to fears about the new new coronavirus, she had nowhere to go. Francesca’s mother is a nurse working long hours in New York City. The grandparents who would otherwise have provided child-care were old enough to be vulnerable to the bug, so they were out. That meant Francesca has spent the last few months with her dad at his pizza shop in the Bronx. In this six-minute piece from Radio Diaries and NPR, we take a look at what it’s been like to be a bright and typical 11-year-old thrust into a completely different world. She puts pizza boxes together and answers phones. She’s even learned to make perfect pizzas. I found the story touching. It reminds me of the degree to which children used to learn more about the real world than they do today. Even though she won’t follow in the pizza-making footsteps of her father, I’ll bet this will be one of the defining experiences of her childhood, one that she will treasure for years to come.

I noticed three instances over the weekend of people talking about Donald Trump’s “campaign of hate.” I wanted to correct them — because they misunderstand this narcissist — but I knew they wouldn’t get my point. It’s not that I’m defending him, because what he does is worse than hate. You simply have to understand the way narcissists think to understand him. Trump doesn’t hate. It’s worse than hate. He’s indifferent and angry with anyone who doesn’t obey him and worship him, those who don’t give him what’s called “narcissistic supply.” People believe that Trump hates blacks or Hispanics or foreigners or whatever group which he’s seen as hating. It’s true that he experiences rage at people who will not give him what he wants, but he’s not in touch enough with his real self to feel real hatred, much less to feel real love. He’s like a vampire who sucks all the available praise and adoration from any group of people — any way he can get it. He doesn’t love rural, blue-collar white folks, but their adoration gives him what he craves. He’s not emotionally mature enough even to hate. For a narcissist, people are simply objects to manipulate, depending on what he can get from them. Trump’s indifference is far worse than hatred. This isn’t ideological or political. It’s pathological. He’s not mature enough to hate.

The decline of modern culture can be seen clearly by looking at what passes for public discourse. There was a time when people who wanted their ideas accepted made rational arguments. It was assumed that most people were bright enough and rational enough to evaluate those arguments — and a surprising number of them really were. Today, the arguments are made in the form of irrational and simplistic graphics called “memes.” Because these graphics can’t convey complex or nuanced information, they present dumbed-down presentations of positions which are stunningly juvenile and seem designed to offend rather than to convince. We have regressed from books and dense pamphlets to a level more like that of angry kindergartners making crayon-scrawled hate notes to send to other children. Reason no longer plays a role in public discourse, and this signals the coming fall of this society.

Lucy just made possible friends with two little girls, but the girls are more enthusiastic so far than she is. Joy, 5, and Hope, 6, just moved in with their grandmother on my street. I didn’t know this, but while Lucy and I were walking, I heard a tiny voice from the darkness cry out, “Hi, doggie!” It took me a minute to figure out where the voice was coming from, but once I did, their grandmother, Rose, came out onto the porch and gave the girls permission to pet Lucy, which delighted the girls. Joy said she wasn’t allowed off her porch since she had socks and no shoes. Lucy was shy, but allowed them to pet her a bit, while the girls marveled about how soft she is. I hope Lucy will let them be her friends. It’s a joy to see how far Lucy has come since she came to live with me. She’s nothing like the “special needs dog” who I was told would never get close to anybody.

I’ve never taken YouTube very seriously as a publishing platform — not enough to do anything more than post the occasional random video — but I’ve started laying a foundation for doing more with it in the future. I created and uploaded some simple branding to my longstanding YouTube channel this weekend and I’ll be doing more in the future. The channel has only about 300 subscribers, so if you feel so inclined, I would appreciate it if you’d subscribe. As with all things on social media, subscriber counts and views help me to get future content seen more easily by others. Click here to visit the channel.

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