Lucky I’m in Love with My Best Friend

Yesterday (10/11) I officiated Marcie and Matt’s wedding ceremony at Waldorf Astoria, in Orlando, Florida. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

We are interesting organisms, us human beings. We look out at the world around us with a jaundiced view. We see patterns, where there are none. We see plans, when it is the unplanned that beckons. We see answers, where questions reign supreme.

Why do we do this? Richard Dawkins surmises that it is because we are the descendants of the humanoids who saw the tornado, the hurricane, the storm, vested them with agency, and ran. The humanoids who did not, just thought about it, and engaged in deeper analysis, did not run, and so were wiped out. So we really need to fight our evolutionary tendency, just to help us face reality. However, if we are able to do so, this can lead to greater appreciation and gratitude, for the good fortune we have found.

So, even though Marcie says that not meeting her beloved, "almost seems like an impossible outcome because I can’t comprehend a circumstance where I wouldn’t be spending my life with Matt," this does not mean she imbues anyone with agency for having made that happen. In fact,  that would have cheapened it for her. Instead she sees in her life, "an overarching theme... of luck, gratitude and appreciation," of her good fortune.

Matt too talks about how lucky we are to be here, that that is to be cherished, and that that is what makes life magical.  As Matt reminds us, "If I rewound the clock 100 million years ago and told you what would have to happen for you to be standing here today, you’d say that would be impossible." "Based on that alone," Matt reminds us, "we should wake up every day feeling very special, insanely fortunate, and immensely appreciative that we get to take part in another day of life.  How incredibly lucky we are to simply be breathing and can experience love, joy, happiness, fulfillment, and even the negative feelings that make us appreciate the good ones."

And arguably, the greatest fulfillment and joy you can feel, is in Matt's words, "walking down the aisle about to marry your best friend," not because someone pre-ordained it, but because you have hit the jackpot. Indeed, in Marcie's words, living life, "as fully as possible means so much more if you get LUCKY enough to have your best friend by your side to share it all with."

Marcie and Matt, what we wish for you, is that as the years go by, and your love evolves, you continue to feel as fortunate as you do today, because in the words of the song by Jason Mraz, each of you can say, "Lucky, I'm in love with my best friend."

I Know How Lucky I Am to Have You

Yesterday (10/10) I officiated Mariella and Josh’s wedding ceremony at Maison Dupuy, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

One of the first things Mariella and Josh told me was that they wanted their wedding to be personalized and meaningful, and a celebration of them, their family and friends coming together. That is fairly standard. However, they also wanted their ceremony to have a particular emphasis on books and nature as the things that brought them together, and still play a central role in in their togetherness. Not that standard, however, anyone who knows Mariella and Josh, will not be surprised by this at all.

Not surprisingly, how they met is both connected to books and reads like a short story. Here is how Mariella recounts it: “Josh and I met on the blue line train in Chicago. I have been riding this train for 15 years. One day this cute guy sits next to me on the train. I am usually focused on my book, and don't pay attention to my surroundings. But he sits next to me and pulls out a book, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which is this amazing historical fantasy about a magician and his protégé, where magic is actually a line of work. It is one of my favorite books, and I was so surprised that this guy in a suit would pull it out. Not exactly the Wall Street Journal. So I just casually said, "That is a really good book, you're going to like it," and… then we talked about Neil Gaiman, whose book I was reading, sort of the same genre, and we started talking about our favorite books. And then he let it drop that he was a writer, and I am too. It was kismet…” As Josh says, in what almost reads like the sub heading of a review of the story: “How’s that for the beginning of a love story?”

Though, “kismet” a Turkish word, derived from the Arabic word “qisma”, which means lot, is taken to mean fate or something preordained, Mariella probably used the word colloquially, not literally. Even so, listen to Josh, a staunch rationalist: “I can’t account exactly for why I was where I was when I met Mariella.” Mysterious, huh?

This reminded me of one of the most beautiful book passages I know in a book about Mariella and Josh’s other shared love, nature, “Unweaving the Rainbow”, by Richard Dawkins. In a scientific tome, you do not expect to find words that read like poetry, but here you are. Mariella and Josh marvel at the good fortune of them, against great statistical odds of the Chicago Transit Authority, having met. Dawkins marvels at each one of us even coming into existence against much greater odds:  “The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds…”

So, when you incorporate what Dawkins says and what Mariella and Josh say, you arrive at a fascinating idea: When you find that one person that you love, that one person, who in our groom’s words gives you, “woozy magic of the stomach and heart,” and who you also know as our bride says, will love you more than anyone else ever could – then you have won. Having won Dawkins’ lottery of nature, you have now won a second lottery – the lottery of the heart.

That can allow you to embody the words of a song that I was reminded of, when I thought about the wonderful relationship Mariella and Josh have, the story of how they met, and how lucky they are to have each other. Beautiful, by Jim Brickman, alludes, once again, to nature and literature, but also to beauty and love:

From the moment I saw you,

From the moment I looked into your eyes.

There was something about you I knew.

That you were once in a lifetime

A treasure near impossible to find.

I know how lucky I am to have you.