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Get Out of Jail Free

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Here’s a question for you: do you ever connect two or more thoughts or events that are completely unrelated? When we do that we make false conclusions which frustrate us and the people around us.

Andy had a rough day last week. His boss scolded him for a project that was behind schedule. Worst of all, it wasn’t completely his fault. The next day he was assigned a corner desk without a window. He connected that to the scolding and concluded that the move was a punishment. That created ill will towards his boss and envy for the employee who got the window.

Actually, Andy had a choice. He could either believe the two incidents were unrelated, or make a wrong connection. He chose to assume that the reprimand and the move were connected. He came to work everyday with a cloud over his head, ready to add one more false assumption to the chain.

The truth is that there was no connection between the reprimand and the move. Had he bothered to ask he would have discovered that they moved him to another desk to make room for an employee who had been in an accident and was on crutches. It was only temporary.

You’re in the Jailhouse Now

Mark comes home from work. He’s tired, so he doesn’t greet his wife, Sally, with much enthusiasm. That morning she awoke late, causing more tension than usual in their morning routine. Sally makes a connection between those two separate incidents. Let’s visit Sally’s brain on that day.

“Mark was irritated because I woke up late this morning. Mark doesn’t look happy now. He must still be mad about this morning. In fact, he’s probably still mad about that time last week with his mother.

“Who is he to be mad? He’s not perfect! He makes mistakes, but I guess I make the biggest ones. In fact, I’m always the problem. Why did wonderful Mark have to ruin his life by marrying stupid me? He thinks I’m stupid! I’ll fix him. And his mother. She’s the one who makes me look bad. She has never thought I am good enough for her darling boy . . .”

On it goes. Turn after turn, Sally winds her way into a labyrinth of confused feelings. A stone cold silence grips her.

The truth is, Mark had forgotten all about that morning. He wasn’t mad at Sally. In fact, he was a little mad at himself for being so grumpy when he came home. Now they have a problem. Sally’s chained in the dungeon and blames Mark for putting her there. Mark is upset because she blames him. There’s a long cold night ahead for these two lovebirds unless they can find a way to break the chain of wrong connections.

Catch a bird and put it in a cage. Now try to reach in and take the bird out. That bird will resist, fight, peck, bounce off the wires— anything but let you remove it from the cage. So, if Mark attempts to reason with Sally she might get even madder.

Or, he could ignore her. “She put herself in the dungeon, so she can get herself out!”he might think. And what about Sally? She’s pouting in her cold, dark dungeon cell. She’s waiting for Mark to make a move, to attempt to rescue her. Yet she’s still mad at him. Is there any way for Sally to get out of jail free?

Has Anybody Seen My Key?

It’s better to not make the wrong connection in the first place, but what do you do if you already have? At the core of every wrong connection is a false assumption. Sally could have asked Mark if something was troubling him, or she could have assumed everything was fine. Either one would have kept her out of jail. Now the only way out is to admit what she has done, forgive herself, and ask Mark to forgive her. Doesn’t seem too hard, does it?

The strange thing about dungeons like Sally’s is that they aren’t really locked. The key is on the inside, with the prisoner. But if making wrong connections gets us into jail, pride keeps us there. We feel foolish for causing so much trouble over nothing. We don’t like feeling foolish, so we never reach for the key.

What is the key? Humility. Such an archaic sounding word in this age of self-assertion. When was the last time you saw an article on the values of humility in any secular magazine? But until we humble ourselves we remain prisoners of our own faulty connections. A whole world of love and joy is waiting for us outside. All we have to do is open the door and walk out.

Think, Act, Pray

1. In addition to chaining unrelated events together, Sally complicated the problem in other ways. Look at the paragraph where I recorded her thoughts. See if you can find at least one statement she made for each of the following:

  • Shifting The Blame
  • Unforgiveness
  • Fault-finding
  • Low self-esteem
  • Expanding the sphere of the conflict

2. Think of a question Sally could have asked her husband that would have kept her out of jail.

Do We Still Need Marriage?

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For almost 30 years I have talked to Malaysians about dating and marriage. My wife and I have conducted hundreds of marriage seminars, taught family life courses for colleges, and counselled many couples as well. We also do pre-marriage counselling using materials that we developed in the Malaysian context.

Malaysians are smart. They want some clear answers, not just general principles. Instinctively they know that this a vitally important topic, something with life-long effects. They have watched their parents’ and associates’ marriages, evaluating whether a marriage like that is what they really want. As one young woman wrote to us in an email:

“I’m starting to feel slightly disillusioned about marriages. As it is, I can hardly muster excitement for my friends who are getting married. It’s just hard to be where they are when in my own life and relationship, I feel like a girl trying to wade to the other bank in a river of clay.”

It is even harder to know what to do about dating and marriage now than it was 25 years ago. Malaysian culture is changing rapidly, and much of that change is fuelled by an almost unlimited flow of ideas and concepts.

Ideas are powerful. They can change our beliefs, our values, our assumptions, and ultimately, our choices. Ideas come to us in messages, and we see or hear thousands everyday. Some come from media – in programmes, movies, music, yes, but also in advertisements. Some reach us through social networking. Our parents have their ideas and so do our spiritual leaders. We get some ideas by observing our world. Combining our observations with other messages we get from other channels, and we form opinions about life, including marriage.

So we really have no choice. Since we cannot live in a cave (and who would want to?), we have to find a way to evaluate messages and the ideas they contain.

This avalanche of conflicting messages and ideas may be one reason more young adults are delaying marriage.

A generation or two ago young people looked forward to marriage. They actually assumed that they would marry, once for life, sometime in their early to mid-twenties. Now those assumptions have changed:

“Today’s young adults often leave their parents’ home later, or return more often, extend their education longer, delay marriage, and change jobs more frequently than their parents’ generation. The factors affecting these changes range from economic conditions, to changing views and norms, to a changing portrait of this generation … ” (The Network to Transitions in Adulthood, (transad.pop.upenn.edu/about/whatweknow.html)

The same website continues:

“Nowhere do we see such a fundamental shift than in this generation’s views on marriage and family. Youth today are delaying marriage and family longer, and often believe it’s necessary to have all one’s ducks in a row (education completed, career well established, money saved for a house, etc.) before marrying.

“They also view potential partners in a much more romantic ideal. They are looking for that soulmate, someone who will be the ying to their yang. They are also less willing to give up their independence. Whereas past generations typically viewed marriage as you + me = us, today’s youth see it as you + me = you and me.”

Here is more data from the good old United States of America, the country whose social ideas and concepts are most widely spread throughout the world, particularly through media:

“When Belinda Luscombe (a researcher) argues that marriage is ‘in purely practical terms just not as necessary as it used to be,’ she has a rationale to back up her argument. ‘Neither men nor women need to be married to have sex or companionship or professional success or respect or even children.’

“All that is true — when marriage is viewed on the canvas of American culture. Marriage no longer regulates sex. The Sexual Revolution severed sex from marriage in a social sense, and the arrival of The Pill offered a pharmaceutical means of severing sex from reproduction.

“No-fault divorce arrived as a legal accommodation to marital impermanence, effectively redefining both marital and family law in the process. Social status and professional expectations were liberated from the question of marriage, and many feminists declared that marriage itself was an impediment to the full liberation of women. – Albert Mohler in Who Needs Marriage: TIME Asked the Question – Do You Have an Answer? Christianity.com

Closer to Malaysia, Singapore (which, it seems, often reflects the social changes that Malaysia eventually experiences) has its own challenges:

Singaporeans are getting married later, and more are staying single, according to Stork & Cupid Out to Lunch? – A Sociological Appreciation of Late Marriage and Low Fertility on Singapore Society by Paulin Tay Straughan, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore

Those comments are just some examples of the shifting assumptions and changing ideas in the Malaysian experience. For a look at what marriage was intended to be, see Marriage by the Book