I thought staying awake for my 50-minute freshman year Intro to Theology seminar at Notre Dame was a Herculean task until I signed up for a three-hour theology course while studying abroad in London and uncovered dimensions of boredom I didn't know even existed.
Needless to say, that class, titled "The Holy Spirit," was not my favorite. The only thing that saved my sanity was that the instructor, Professor Knell, was an absolute barrel-of-monkeys, bouncing back-and-forth across the classroom for the entire three hours and building a web of tangents so dense that we'd eventually find ourselves discussing why he doesn't let his kids believe in Santa Claus with no recollection whatsoever of how we got there. I still hated the class, but as long as Knell was standing at the front of the room, you knew there would be at least some entertainment value sprinkled throughout the morning.
One day, Knell was overviewing what his lesson plan for the day was, and he ended it by saying, "And at the end of class, if we have time, I'll walk you all through my thoughts on marriage." Now, admittedly, there are many things I would rather do after two hours and 45 minutes of dissecting Saint Augustine readings than spend another 15 minutes listening to my professor expound upon marriage, but I can also think of a lot of things I'd less rather do, one of those being dissect Saint Augustine readings for another 15 minutes, so I went along with the plan.
As promised, at the very end of class, Knell asked for any questions, and hearing none, proceeded to seamlessly transition to the topic of matrimony. He said he knew two things with certainty that lead to healthy marriages, and he now wanted to share those with us as we get ready to someday say "I do" ourselves:
Americans have this mistaken and somewhat problematic notion that the wedding day should be the peak of the marriage and everything after that is, in essence, downhill. This is false. The wedding day should be the lowest point in the marriage, and every day after that, you should work to grow still closer to each other and build upon the relationship you've already formed. Marriages should get better with time, and the wedding day should be the start of that process, not the end.
When you marry someone, you're not just marrying the person they are on that wedding day. You're marrying the person they are on the wedding day, the person they will be on the day after, and all the persons they will become in the future.
I can't say I'm an expert in marriage psychology, but walking out of class that day, I knew he was without doubt right on both fronts. This advice fundamentally shifted the way I think about marriage today, and that's worth way more than an extra 15 minutes on Saint Augustine.
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