An ordinary life it s not for everyone

I'm Dr. Orion Teraband, and this is Psych-Hacks! Better Living Through Psychology, and the topic for today's short talk is an ordinary life. So this is an episode for anyone out there who is thinking of settling down in the conventional sense, getting married, starting a family, this type of thing. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this lifestyle, but there's nothing absolutely right about it either. Like anything else in life, it comes with a series of tradeoffs, benefits, and liabilities. This kind of lifestyle can do some things well and other things poorly. So it's for each individual to look inside him or herself and decide whether this is the kind of life that he or she will thrive in, rather than simply take it for granted that such a life will provide them with what they're looking for. After such an examination, some people will say, yeah, I think this will work for me, while others will say, oh no, I don't think that that's a good fit, and that's okay. We don't need to force everyone into a single way of being. The most important thing to understand about marriage and family is that they are very ordinary things, and I'm saying this without judgment. They're ordinary, and that means that the more ordinary or conventional you are as a person, the more likely this type of life is going to make sense to you. The way I think about it, settling down and starting a family is a little like living in the shire, at least in its ideal expression. We see Samwise live out this dream when he comes back from his great adventure, works up the courage to ask out Rosie, and eventually settles down to sire 13 children with her. Yeah, 13. You can kind of imagine their life together, the pitter patter of little footsteps, the cozy bustle of their little hobbit hole. Rosie's cooking dinner for everyone, while Sam is out happily working in the garden, and overall there's a sense of warm togetherness pervading the entire domestic scene. Again, absolutely nothing wrong with this. In fact, Sam and Rosie seem to do a lot of things right. For instance, their marriage appears to be very simple and humble. That's right. As I've stated previously, marriage is fundamentally a very humble institution. A lot of marriages fail because they are made to carry more weight than they were ever designed to support. People want and expect their relationships to provide them with more than they can reasonably deliver. That's a problem. And when people like Sam and Rosie accept this fact and settle into a simple life together, there can be a kind of quiet grace to this arrangement. It's peaceful. It's loving. It's low to the ground. A marriage like this requires the extinction of certain big passions and grand visions, as they are functionally incompatible with this type of life. But if you can settle into the gentle rhythms of this arrangement, and if you don't want or expect much more than that, then this can be a very comfortable and satisfying situation. However, you also have to understand that Sam had no great ambitions in life. That's part of the reason why he could carry Frodo when necessary without the ring tempting him. There was no real wellspring of yearning or ambition or talent within him, so he couldn't give the ring much to work with. Sam was a good person with a good heart, but his heart was full of very ordinary desires and very humble ambitions. You kind of get the sense that the most he ever wanted out of life was to marry Rosie and work in his garden. And this might make Sam sweet or even wise, but I'm not sure this was a choice. Like, I don't think he could have been otherwise. He didn't have to struggle against some great ambition or passion to arrive at this wisdom. That was just the way he was. It should kind of go without saying, but an ambitious person is not going to be able to live in the Shire. It's going to be too comfortable, too banal and insipid, too boring and constrained. Passions and ambitions and great works absolutely take people away from their marriages and their families. Now, this doesn't necessarily lead to the dissolution of these structures, but it inevitably creates tension, a tension that will require energy and attention and tolerance to accommodate. Some people will be able to make bigger accommodations because some people are more flexible than others, and some people won't. But even if greater and greater accommodations are successful, at some point, you have to ask yourself, what's the point? Like, is all this trouble worth it? Maybe there's a different structure, a different way of life that would require fewer accommodations and still provide the support and opportunity to live your desired lifestyle. Like, that could be a much better starting point for such a life than a traditional marriage. We don't often talk about this, but a long-term relationship is essentially a prolonged compromise. I'm not just talking about the big compromises like where you live or who stays home with the kids. I'm talking about the constant, daily, unremitting compromises on your time, your attention, and your energy. In such a relationship, your time is no longer entirely your own. You can't just pursue your own interests and passions and goals without considering the needs and well-being of your partner, at least not without consequences. Among other things, this means that it's very difficult to get pure, undivided solitude and pure, undivided focus when you're cohabitating in a marriage. Now, many people, especially if they're more ordinary or conventional, will see no great loss in surrendering their solitude. They might be getting out of a relationship in order to get away from themselves. In fact, this is very common. But anyone more extraordinary or unconventional, and I'm using these terms without judgment, is going to feel the forfeiture of these things acutely. The fact of the matter is that it's very difficult, if not impossible, for extraordinary people to do great things, some of which might profoundly benefit humanity and devote sufficient time to their marriages to be a good spouse. Consider Albert Einstein. Einstein was married, for a time. Imagine devoting your life to unraveling the mysteries of the physical universe while simultaneously contending with a wife who wants hours of your time and energy and attention every day, or else she'll become, I don't know, petulant, or withdrawn, or aggressive. But Al, you were formulating your special relativity theory last night. Tonight, I want to go to dinner with the Van Schnuffles, and then you promised to take me shopping. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Thank God Einstein divorced his wife. Thank God he gave up on an ordinary life. He was not an ordinary man, and an ordinary life apparently threatened to suffocate him, and he wisely refused to die. Not only do I think that the ability to pursue his goals with an undivided attention was likely more satisfying for Einstein himself, it was absolutely more beneficial to humanity as a whole. Now, most of us are not Albert Einstein, but most of us aren't Sam Gamgee either. Most of us exist on a continuum between these two extremes, and it's for each person to make an honest, humble assessment of where he or she exists on this continuum. And getting this wrong is going to be associated with a lot, a lot of pain and suffering. My hunch is that throughout history, it's been far more common for extraordinary people to have been shunted into ordinary relationships than the other way around. Consider how the world might look today if these extraordinary individuals, men and women whose names we'll likely never know, hadn't had their talents and ambitions compromised away in conventional marriages. Most likely, they would have been happier, and their efforts would have redounded to humanity as a whole. As I've said before, marriage is good for some people. It's good for the ordinary person with ordinary desires. It gives them a structure, a container to satisfy those needs and desires. However, marriage is just not very good for others. It's not very good for the extraordinary person with extraordinary desires. And that's okay, because most people are not extraordinary by definition. So thinking like this isn't going to lead to the collapse of civilization or something. Most people are ordinary, but not all people. And it's your job to be real honest with yourself about where you lie on that continuum. And if you're lucky enough to find yourself in a relationship with an extraordinary person, do everyone a favor, yourself, the other person, and humanity as a whole, and don't try to force that extraordinary individual into your prosaic little vision of life. What do you think? Does this fit with your own experience? Let me know in the comments below. And please, send this episode to someone who you think might benefit from its message. I know you know someone who needs to hear this, because it's word-of-mouth referrals like that that really help to make the channel grow, guys. Other value propositions? Anyone looking to join my free weekly newsletter, for which I write original content, no AI, or book a paid one-on-one consultation with yours truly, can find out more on my website. There are also my books, the best-selling The Value of Others, in which I explore my economic model of relationships, and my psychological novel Starry Night, where I explore the final days of painter Vincent van Gogh. There's also my private member community, The Captain's Quarters, where I host, among other things, bi-monthly group consultation calls with a wonderful group of folks. Check them out, all of these resources. The links to them are in the description below. A lot of great value there. As always, I appreciate your support, and thank you for listening.