internet favorites for january: love exists

In the fall my friends and I watched the documentary "112 Weddings," where a wedding videographer catches up with some of the couples he's filmed over the years, and interviews them about how their lives and relationships have gone. The documentary was almost entirely negative, lots of emphasis on how people didn't "think things through" ("what does that mean, though?" Eve wondered), and how the challenges of child-rearing can destroy everything.

So I went back to my archive of favorite things on the internet to re-read my top two articles about love and relationships.

This one, from the Huffington Post, includes an idea I just love:

“One woman in Georgia gave some pretty amazing advice. She and her husband have been married for over 60 years, and after being asked what her best relationship advice would be, she paused and said ... 'Don't be afraid to be the one who loves the most.'"

I didn't understand what that advice meant until I was in a very serious relationship, but now I think about it through every rough patch, and it helps so much.

This one, from the Atlantic, focuses on a very empowering and beautiful idea: that trying to be a good person and a good partner will make you better. I find it easy to notice what's unfair about the world, and what can't be controlled, and how often bad things happen to good people. It's nice to think that sometimes trying to do very hard things might actually work.

“There’s a habit of mind that the masters have,” Gottman explained in an interview, “which is this: they are scanning social environment for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully. Disasters are scanning the social environment for partners’ mistakes.”

“It’s not just scanning environment,” chimed in Julie Gottman. “It’s scanning the partner for what the partner is doing right or scanning him for what he’s doing wrong and criticizing versus respecting him and expressing appreciation.”

I hope you find these helpful too!

my sister on her wedding day

from "Miles City, Montana" by Alice Munro

"I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself. I lived in a state of siege, always losing just what I wanted to hold on to. But on trips there was no difficulty. I could be talking to Andrew, talking to the children and looking at whatever they wanted me to look at--a pig on a sign, a pony in a field, a Volkswagen on a revolving stand--and pouring lemonade into plastic cups, and all the time those bits and pieces would be flying together inside me. The essential composition would be achieved. This made me hopeful and lighthearted. It was being a watcher that did it. A watcher, not a keeper."

--Alice Munro, "Miles City, Montana"

east north carolina in the summertime

Nat. Brut

Some photos and thoughts from farming, published in Nat. Brut. Many thanks to Kayla and Axel for including me in their first issue as editors.

Formal halls

Formal halls at Oxford are funny. I guess it varies from college to college. But despite all the beautiful settings, everyone seems concerned with making the students eat as quickly as possible, so they can set the tables again. Sometimes a dessert sauce (like custard) comes out during the salad course, which is confusing. But the dining halls themselves are gorgeous. I like rising for the Latin prayers, and the way you get severely scolded for being late.

Some of my friends at Oxford had complaints about the awkward way that the colleges stick to the letter of tradition, at the expense of convenience and good sense. (You might not get a high grade on an English paper because Tolkein got a high grade, and are you as good as Tolkein?) But when I look back on my college graduation more than a year ago, from a school aggressively interested in staying with the times, my biggest sadness is how disconnected I felt from Harvard's tradition and its centuries of students, and how little I understood the meaning of my education there. In Sever, I'd try so hard to hold in my mind a sense of all the learning that had gone on in each classroom before me, but I'd draw a blank. It felt almost like a stage set. And without being able even to notice or engage with my surroundings, how could I feel anything for the mystery plays and bildungsromans I read there? The gate, the library steps, the ringing bell: all only reminded me of me and my immediate friends. A horrible feeling, like forgetting something very important.

Anyway, at Oxford you can't stay long in the dining halls, but at Harvard people study and talk in them at all hours.