Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 65

“Humans are born soft and supple. When dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant. When dead, they are brittle and dry”—Lao Tzu

The great Chinese philosopher urges us to take a critical look now and then at our routines. As familiar and comfortable as they are, they can become deadly, as someone suggested by calling habits “graves with the ends knocked out.”

That is certainly true in marriage. Many years ago my wife and I enjoyed a play in which the wife blindsided her husband on their twenty-first anniversary with the confession that two things about him had over the years come to irritate her to no end.

First irritation: “You seem so much smaller.” She meant by that how he had fallen off her pedestal. Early on he had been her hero who could do no wrong, but after twenty-one years together she had come to see him as ordinary, hardly bigger than life, and with no surprises left in him.

Second: “I don’t like your nose.” She meant the never-varying way he blew his nose; specifically, one blast followed by three short puffs, followed by folding his handkerchief the same way every time. The wife was chaffing in a marriage that had become a victim of stagnation, monotony, and humdrum.

When my favorite uncle came for a visit, as he rode in my car several times he commented on what an extraordinarily smooth ride it was. I was a bit mystified as to what was going on. Come to find out, his car had gradually drifted out of alignment, but he didn’t notice it until he rode in someone else’s “aligned” car.

To avoid becoming brittle and dry, it might be good sometimes to take a different route home, answer the phone with a different greeting or inflection, or vary the way we blow our nose.