Only a few years behind the times...

20/11/2002

So my friends, Jean and David, got married a couple of weeks ago. On the surface, not a big deal. They're 25 (I'm younger than most of my friends), about the right age to get married. They are also two of the best people I know, no matter how you cut it. Good Catholics both (David has 10 siblings, give or take), they're the kind of people any religion would like to claim as its own. Friendly, outgoing, smart, involved... you name it, and that's them.

They've also been going out for, oh, three or four years now. It all depends on how you count it. It was a bit of a rough start, but it's all water under the bridge now.

So why has this completely unsurprising (they were engaged for seven months or so) wedding thrown me for such a loop? Why do I feel so compelled to write about it? They aren't my first set of friends to get married, (I attended my first non-family wedding in July of 2002) after all.

I guess it's the fact, if nothing else, that they are people whom I have known so well, and whom I've seen change and mature so much that really gets to me. In the last couple of years, I've not seen my friends as often (not having classes with them will do that), and we've all become a bit more "grown up" — some of us have jobs, some of us have finished a second degree and are already pursuing a third.

But what I saw in the church on that warm November afternoon was a show of maturity and character that I have never seen in my friends. Something about that ceremony, with two hundred and some-odd guests, all crowded later in the basement of the church for the evening reception, really spoke to me. It wasn't just the ceremony; it wasn't just how radiant the bride looked in her gown. It was the warmth and sense of welcoming displayed by everyone present. It was the speeches given at dinner, and the friendship, and closeness which were conveyed with them.

Who am I kidding. Whatever it was that affected me so profoundly two and a half weeks ago, it's bigger than words. It's certainly deeper than anything I can fathom; perhaps it is this realization — that there is something there, that I know exists but cannot see or recognize — that has blown me over. All I know is that, whatever it is, Jean and David are lucky enough to have discovered it.

Somewhere in my mind, there is a segue from all of this to the topic of complacency. I've always been the complacent sort, never really trying to get that job, or that award, never quite getting around to all of those things which I've been meaning to do. Now I'm living in Ottawa, and for a stretch there, I was actually quite active. I was doing things, renovating the house, making lists of things I needed to buy and then actually buying them.

Now my thesis is stalling again, I have some coding work that I've been reluctant to tackle, and the cycle of complacency seems to be starting afresh. I don't want that to happen. I feel that, this time, I have a bit more control. My time is my own, and my workspace is entirely my own. It is mine to mess up, but more importantly, when it is a mess, I have no one to blame but myself. It's amazing how that compels me to keep things cleaner here than I ever did in Toronto. (Not that things are spotless, but it's an improvement... :)

Maybe it's the fact that Jean and David, two lifelong members of the Procrastinators' Club (at least they would be, if they ever got around to filling in the membership form), have taken that important step. It signifies a fundamental change to the way they'll live, and it will affect every single part of their lives.

Why haven't I made a change like that? It's not simply a matter of circumstance, which would (of course) be the easy answer. I simply know, deep down, that I am not ready for anything of that magnitude.

Maybe that's what I felt at the wedding, and maybe that is what has been chewing at me. It's not that I need to change; I just need to know that I am capable of such an action.

I'll add it to the list of things to do...