Monday, July 13, 2009

Further Confessions of a Happy Single Person

Everyone wants you to be happy. That's their line. "If it makes you happy." Especially if you are single, your happiness is everyone else's business. People will tell you what to wear, what to post on Facebook, and even where to live, because you are single, and clearly, there is no way you are happy in your current state. You need all this advice to get you married off, because you are obviously not going to be happy until you do.
I challenge this theory. I am single, and I am pretty happy. Obviously, I want to get married, but marriage is not the secret to life’s happiness. Someone else cannot make you happy. Only YOU can. Yes, your spouse will complete you. But if you ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
I do volunteer work for an organization called Heart Mind and Soul which, among other things, encourages Jewish teens to realize their own potential. One thing we try to instill in the teens is that they have their own unique abilities, strengths, and talents, and that just by being themselves, they are powerful people and can achieve anything. I wonder, if I told these same kids, and by the way, you actually aren’t okay and will never be okay or amount to anything until you get married. What would that teach them? What are we telling people when we say, you will never be okay as a single person?
There is a lot of pressure in our society to get married. It starts at around 18 and doesn’t stop until we walk down that aisle. Everyone laments the “shidduch crisis” and tells us that basically, we are pitiable and unfortunate until we get married. The younger generation then panics. Are they doomed to be just as pathetic? This unreasonable pressure creates a cycle of low self-esteem, a rush to get married, and often results in broken engagements or divorces because of this desperation. We as a society have created a fear of singlehood instead of using it as a means to better ourselves for the partner we will hopefully one day have.
I have learned a lot in the last ten years living on my own. I have learned how to balance a checkbook. Walk into a room where I know nobody and leave with invitations to four different families for Shabbos. I have learned how to drive, change a flat tire, negotiate a lease, make sushi, and how to teach. Maybe I would have learned these things from my husband if I had gotten married a few years ago. But there is something incredibly rewarding about having learned these things on my own. There is great value in the things I have learned and taught myself. From hosting a Shabbat meal for twenty to checking the oil in my car to teaching a room full of high school students about Shabbos, these will make me a better wife and mother when I finally do get married.
I want to get married. But until I do find that person, I will not sit around being bitter and depressed. Because the kind of person that I want to spend the rest of my life with is not looking for a sad and mopey person.


At the end of the day, I am happy that I am working on making myself a better person—the person who will eventually merit the partner I am looking for. He will not “make” me happy, but he will benefit from me being a happy person.
If we could take a step back from generating a greater crisis and instill in people to learn how to be happy with themselves first, it would create a revolution. Instead of advising singles to settle, to move, or to wear lipstick, we would have people growing and learning what makes them truly content. Happy people would be looking for other happy people. Valuing themselves enough to find the partner worthy of them. Imagine if we could teach that to our kids. Crisis averted. Happiness established.