Last weekend I met Marie at a housewarming party. She is the motherly neighbor of my friends who hosted the party. When she learned that I officiate weddings and coach communications, she maneuvered me to a table and proceeded to tell me about her daughter, Clarice, who had filed for divorce just six months after her wedding. Marie asked if I would meet with her.
I doubted Clarice wanted some stranger
to “reason” with her; but I felt sorry for Marie and agreed. And out of respect
for her mother, Clarice, who had moved back in with her mom, also agreed.
When I stopped by the next day, I
reassured Clarice that I had no intention of trying to talk her out of her
decision; but, since we both agreed to meet, we might as well spend fifteen
minutes together. I admitted that it was none of my business, but just out of
curiosity, I wondered what had happened in the span of six months to want her
to dissolve her marriage.
Embarrassed, Clarice told me that
she and her husband Frank had dated since high school. They continued on
through college. Everyone just presumed that some day they would marry and once
out of college, the pressure was on. She then told me something that initially
shocked me: “We didn’t want to disappoint
our families and so we decided to get married and we just got caught-up in it
all.”
Then one day, some six months
later, they realized that while they still loved each other, they had no desire
to spend the rest of their lives with each other.
And once again, I was reminded that
life can get very whack-a-doo!
The self-help guru from the 1980’s,
Leo Buscaglia, maintained that, “Not very
many of us are really, in the real sense of the word, alive and living fully.
I'm certain that as long as you leave your life in the hands of other people,
you'll never live. You have to take the responsibility for choosing and
defining your own life.”
As odd as Clarice’s story first
sounded, I later realized that she really wasn’t any more “stupid” than most of
us are at one time or another in our lives–and I say that respectfully! I think most of us can be sloppy when caring
for our lives, going along with decisions made by others because we don’t want
to hurt feelings or accept the consequences of hard decisions.
Ironically, Clarice and Frank
deciding to divorce was the kindest and bravest thing they could do because
finally, they were choosing and defining their own lives.
What about you? What kind, brave
thing can you do for yourself?
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