DTH-XII-0054
“I married the person I love and I want to build something that lasts.”
Vows are a wager against time, a promise to keep choosing one person across all the years you both have left, which are finite and uncounted. A marriage isn't found; it's built, daily, mostly in small unglamorous acts. You've started the most important construction project of your life. Build it like it has to stand.
Your Practice
- Decide what kind of marriage you want to have built in thirty years. Aim there now.
- Do the small daily things, they're the bricks. Grand gestures are just decoration.
- Choose them again on the ordinary days, not just the anniversaries.
- Protect it from drift and neglect, the way anything valuable must be protected.
The Architects
“The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, 'Try it.' And I back 'em up.”
Grace Hopper, Interview in Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Have Shaped Our Times by Lynn Gilbert and Gaylen Moore (1981; reissued 2012 as Particular Passions: Grace Murray Hopper)