I had the most profound thought the other day. It struck me with the weirdest timing. I was running for the sake of my dry clothes from a kid with a squirt gun trying to get me soaked. Another story.

My thought was this: Marriage has become a strange kind of future goal we have. Rather than a joyous arrangement between two people in love so they can share a home and raise children, we are looking at it to answer the desperate question in our minds; What is the meaning in our life? When did we start looking for self-actualization in marriage? What a selfish and empty goal for marriage, I thought.

We’re going to need examples.

A good portion of modern life is influenced by what we see on the internet. “Goals” is a short way of saying; “God, I hope I get to do that and look like that one day because then I’ll know I’m a success and not some lame failure who won’t be satisfied in life.” So when we see instagram couples who live in a van and travel the world together, taking photos once they’re clean and in good lighting, we think we need to find someone who will allow us to do those same things. We can be so picky about who we marry because we fear if we marry the wrong person we won’t be fully satisfied. How selfish is that mentality?

I’m not sure who to blame more, the Christian church for making marriage sound like this universe altering decision in your walk of faith, or Romance movies making it look like no one truly lives until they’re in love.

Marry your best friend. Marry the person you love living life with. Marriage isn’t an experience that needs the right ingredients to be correct. It’s sharing a whole life with someone. A journey together where sometimes you go through challenges together and sometimes apart, but always return to one another to talk it out. People used to get married for wealth, or family politics. Either for fun or because to prevent their friend from being deported (C.S Lewis). My grandmother married my grandpa because “He smelled nicer than other boys and thought I was cute.” My parents got married because they had been dating best friends for 5 years and why on earth would they have married anyone else?

Marriage should be doing life together, not looking for what you can get from the other person.

I have been searching for the most beautiful woman to give my life meaning. A woman who will love me perfectly and make me the envy of all men. However, now I’m realizing my life has meaning already. I don’t need to wait till I’m in a van with a pretty girl, because what do we do then? Naw, I think I’ll live my life doing my own thing and when I meet a girl who makes life a little brighter, is easier to talk to than spreading butter, and thinks I smell nice, I hope she’s had a crazy profound epiphany about marriage in a modern world as well.

Have standards not goals, have an open mind not expectations.