Fuck happy. The point of living isn’t to be in a perpetual state of fairy-tale ecstasy; it’s to find the meaning of life, the meaning of your life. And the point of marriage, I think, is to create meaning, with every happy and sad memory, every hardship overcome, every kind act, every moment of acceptance, every triumph (Al Gore will likely never get to have another wife watch him win a Nobel Prize), every child, grandchild, pet, and friend you accumulate together. The point of staying married until you die is to have a witness to your whole life, to the meaning you built. In the end, you can look at your spouse and say: Somebody knew me—and I knew them. Which isn’t to suggest you need to marry to have this kind of intimacy but if you do marry and stay alive to that marriage you will get that reward.
-Rachael Combe
