Two years ago on February 17th, 2004, a light snow began to fall around our apartment in Austin, Texas. At the time I was living with my wife, Trina, in a one-bedroom rental on the north side of town. The apartment was small, but well furnished and comfortable for the two of us. We could have easily afforded a more luxurious or prestigious apartment, but we intended to save our money so that we could buy a nice house in the suburbs some years into the future. Save now, enjoy later was our unspoken motto. Our entire life together had been guided by that principle to the point that as the first flakes spiraled towards the Earth from the Heavens on that evening, we not longer considered it a principle, we reflexively lived the ideal.
Trina, an Austin Police Department Cadet, was busy studying for some exams she would take the next morning. I, an underemployed writer, was busy “studying” the television. As we noticed the crystalline shapes piling onto our patio, we stopped for only a moment before deciding that we absolutely must run out and play in the snow. We didn’t hesitate to throw on our thin coats and good shoes and just dash into the winter landscape that was so alien to this part of Texas. We considered nothing but that we had to embrace an opportunity that did not come often to Austin residents. The cold, the wet, the lateness of the hour – none of those would deter us. An activity so antithetical to our motto of delayed gratification, playing in the snow on a “school night”, suddenly became the most important thing as we raced around making snowmen and throwing snowballs at each other. For those few hours, some of the most wonderful of my entire life, we were children again without a care or responsibility in the world.
But as I reflect on that time two years ago, I can only think of two things: how magnificent and precious a time that was and how wrong I was about how “child-like” we were.
The first thoughts about how wonderful that evening was I cannot explain to someone who has never experienced real love and the subsequent joy that can come from that almost otherworldly emotion. Anyone who has seen a good movie or had a nice walk in the park can speak about being entertained or about having a good time. But without the element of true love, a pleasant event is just that – pleasant. Joy, with the almost religious connotation of rapture, is a breathtaking emotion: the combination of deep love and overwhelming happiness that banishes all the darkness of the world with a blinding light of total bliss. For someone who has not had that total devotion to another human being, a night like mine two years ago would be inexplicable; just a walk in the park with snow. But for someone who knows, it was a moment to be held and cherished and remembered as a rare time of real joy.
As for the second thought, it is only in hindsight that I realize that children do not experience events the same way adults do (duh!) and it is neither fair to them or to me to claim we were acting like children. On the surface, both Trina and I behaved as children might: we shouted and giggled, made awkward looking snow men with stick arms and noses, and threw hastily constructed snowballs at each other. But underneath the behavior, the impetus and the emotion were far different. I believe a child would have played in the snow because of novelty and excitement; we played in the snow because it was a reward for the “good” life we had constructed.
From the moment Trina and I became a couple and threw our fortunes and dreams together into one pot, we decided that “tomorrow” was more important than “today”. Without really understanding why, we agreed that any happiness “today” was marginal compared to what we believed to be a golden future. We planned out our careers, saved great sums of money, and seemingly metered out even our emotional lives so that we would have plenty left for the years ahead. Our existence was structured around the idea that the hard work and sacrifice “today” would pay huge dividends later. What need had we for grand luxuries now when we were young and healthy and had each other? Better to enjoy those “free” things now and wait to buy things like good health and youth later when they became more expensive. We figured we would always have each other, so putting off some entertainment and comfort was no great loss.
We also put a great deal of work into making sure that our relationship was sound even though we eschewed entertainment that normally keeps a couple “happy”. Whereas many other partners determined that there was a set number of movie dates or dinner dates or nice homes that were needed to make them a happy couple, we agreed unconsciously that our happiness was more internal than external and that although fun was necessary, even essential, it need not be paramount. Our top priority was that we respected each other emotionally and mentally and a vast amount of effort went into proving that to each other. Fun was a happy bi-product of finding out how to show our love and respect for one another.
So on the day that the snow fell on our happy little home, the reason we didn’t hesitate to run out and play was because we had already, in ways great and small, paid for the right to enjoy ourselves with abandon. And where a child would play because he had plenty of free time to do so and because of the new experience of doing so, we played because we had earned that time together. It meant something, something wonderful and special, because we had passed up so many other minor entertainments. We acted like children, but we experience the joy of adults. We knew the joy that only comes from devotion to another person. It wasn’t the relief one gets from finding food after a long starvation. No, it was altogether another emotion: satisfaction. It was a reward for time well spent. It was a way of saying to each other, “I haven’t missed a thing in life because all I will ever need is one minute like this.”
I am tempted to defend what may sound like a call to deprivation. Because a casual reading of my explanation of that day may sound like someone who thinks it’s acceptable to forgo common comforts in lieu of rare, inexpensive play dates. But it is more a failure of my writing than of the concept. Or perhaps a failure to make the case for faith: it takes a great deal of faith in God and another person to believe that not buying a fast new car today will lead to a happier tomorrow. But I think it is obvious now; I could never have known the simple joy of playing in the snow had Trina and I build a life together based on casual and common thrills.
As a side note I would add that I am not an advocate of deprivation for deprivation’s sake. To say, for example, that a man should go without eating his favorite spicy food for a year simply so he may savor that one occasion is artificial and not true in my way of thinking. If that same man really loved a plain food he would savor it even if he ate it every day. It is not the scarcity of a thing that makes it valuable in this case; it is the effort to accomplish that thing that gives it meaning.
Trina and I didn’t cherish that post-Valentine’s snow because snow was rare in Austin: we cherished it because we had worked hard to make the time to enjoy it. We took an unusual opportunity and said: “This is our moment to relax and reap the reward of our commitment to each other.” We could have taken that moment at some other time; it didn’t have to be that snow. But we could have only had a moment like that because we were productive the rest of the time in our relationship.
In the end our goal, our product, were the words from the Declaration of Independence “…the pursuit of happiness.” That was the thing we had faith in, that thing our working lives would bring us to compliment our deep love for one another. We didn’t seek some pointless thrill; that is not what the Framers meant by “happiness”. We fought for, and worked for, and saved for joy.
One night two years ago we found it… and it was worth it all.
To my love Trina, Happy Valentine’s Day,
Chris
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