Marriage, Love, and Other Time-Fillers
By this point some of you may be saying “Beef, you just had three weeks off from school. Why have the ‘Thoughts’ lain dormant for so long? All you did was sit around and win two more national championships on NCAA 2006.”
It’s true, I did win two more national championships on NCAA 2006 (numbers 8 and 9, earning me a ten-year contract extension)--but don’t be so quick to whip out the jump to conclusions mat. Week 3 of Christmas Break was an awfully fruitful nine days.
It was so eventful, in fact, that it may just take three full Beef Thoughts to cover the whole gamut. Here we go with volume 1: Wedding Edition.
Jared Ray Huckstep and Shannon Something White were wed in holy matrimony on December 30, 2005. For the un-Tecumsehed, a little background: Jared was my partner during my first and best summer as a resident camp counselor at Camp Tecumseh, and Shannon was one of the counselors in the Pathfinder (14-15 year old kids) unit the next summer with me. Jared teaches high school math at Southport High School, and Shannon is entering the home stretch at IUPUI after transferring from Illinois Wesleyan.
It should be noted that, while any marriage is special, they are not uncommon at Camp T. Off the top of my head I can think of 6 or 7 such unions that have come up between co-counselors. As Jared put it, “it’s like a shopping mall for spouses.”
Now you may find this statement a bit absurd, but my mom definitely does not. It has been a long-standing rule in our household that any future significant other must have proper Camp T credentials—until just a year ago, she had narrowed it down to one Sarah Wright for my brother and her sister, Katherine Wright, for ol’ Beefster. The list has expanded to a few more acceptables, but it’s still only two or three names long—this is only a footnote to the real story.
The result of spending 10 weeks in less than glamorous conditions together is that when a Camp-related event happens, a large chunk of its inhabitants turn out. Jared and Shannon’s wedding had probably 35 or 40 counselors, former counselors, and Executive Directors there—it was like a winter reunion. This made for a cool pre-wedding and a very funny post-wedding.
But what about the actual wedding? This is not a particularly enthralling time for the male species. Weddings, wedding gifts, wedding traditions, wedding decorations, and wedding stress are all inventions of the female gender for the female gender. The groom in question is really just an accessory in the matter. And if you are a guy but NOT the groom, the service is an hour of mental free-for-all.
So amidst the music and flowers and powerpoint presentation, my brain got to working on a pretty tough question: Is there such a thing as unconditional love between two unrelated humans? By using the term unrelated, I am excluding parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, and sibling relationships (the immediate family of an individual). Is it possible for one person to meet another person, and love that person unconditionally?
The knee-jerk reaction in my head was “not only is it possible, but that’s what God tells us to do.” I suppose this is true, if not always practical. Can anyone reading this honestly say that they have loved, unconditionally, every person they have encountered in life? Or even one stranger? The key word here is unconditionally. After flipping through my mental index card files, I concluded that the Beefster has yet to do this. You might love a cute kid that you see on the street; but you love them because they are cute. You might love a kind person who helps you on a bad day, but then you love them because they helped you. You might love the victim of a crime, who is robbed of some of their mental or physical capabilities—but once again, you would be loving them for a reason. I would be hard-pressed to come up with the name of a stranger that I loved unconditionally. In fact, I would posit that the only one who ever managed to truly do this just celebrated His 2005th birthday a few days ago.
The logical follow-up becomes, then, is it possible for there to be unconditional love between two people that are unrelated, but know each other? More specifically, between a man and a wife? And here, I think the answer remains “no”. Before the romantics in the crowd jump all over this, let’s take it step by step here. Two people meet. Over some course of time—maybe an instant, maybe several months—they fall in love. But why? There has to be something, or some combination of things, that causes one person to love the other. Maybe it is their kindness, their sincerity, their sense of humor—whatever it is, something causes it. And by definition, that is conditional love. You love that person because of who they are.
A quick counter-argument may involve some anecdotal evidence of a spouse who loved the other so much that despite losing that which once caused their mutual love (i.e., the spouse is injured, in a coma, loses their ability to speak, etc.) the love remained. But Beef would posit that this love is also conditional—that you continue to love that person because of how they were before, because you still see a glimmer of what the person you loved, or because there is hope that they will someday return to the way they were. You are loving either in debt (of the previous love they gave you) or out of their circumstance (pity, empathy, sympathy). Either way, that is conditional love.
Put it this way: if your spouse suddenly pulled a complete 180, went on a murderous rampage, killed and stole from and victimized dozens of people, one of two things would happen. Either you would no longer love him/her, or you would desperately cling to the him/her that you once loved. You would not love the person that he/she had become—if you do, we need to get you checked out ASAP. The point is, you love them on the condition that they remain the same person they were when you fell in love—you don’t love them regardless of what person they are. If you did, then you would be loving all people on earth the same (if character traits and behavior were of no object, you would not distinguish between any two people) and marriage would be a pointless endeavor.
Don’t get angry at me! I do not think marriage is a pointless endeavor—that’s kind of the whole central theme here. No human has ever truly fulfilled what it means to love unconditionally his/her fellow humans, and that makes the sincere and lasting love of a married couple more unique and special than any other conditional love. You might love and sympathize with a homeless person on the street, and be willing to donate your spare change. You might love an innocent child and be willing to donate lots of time and effort to help that child learn how to read. But to give up yourself, to donate all that you have to another person, that person has to fit an exponentially greater and stricter set of conditions. I’d donate ten bucks to a cancer society if I thought it was a good cause; I’d give up three months every year if I thought there was a great Camp to work at; but to give up my Archie Griffin-signed Ohio State jersey, she’d better be more than pretty. And that’s what marital love is, giving up everything and your spouse doing the same. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Now before you go accusing ol’ Beef of turning soft, let’s bring to light two very important facts: 1., Eric “Diver” Scheonheider specifically requested a Beef Thoughts: Marriage Edition, and 2., these wedding services last a long long time.
Next Beef Thought: Chicago Edition. Three young men from Indiana walk into the biggest city in the Midwest. Trouble ensues.
Ols: Love isn’t skin-deep, but it’s not Ted Ginn Jr. going-deep either.
the rest of the thoughts 1.6.06