Get hitched, y’all

Finished up Elric and pivoted back to Bernanos. Quite the vibe shift.

The daily digest email seems to be working well. I had the script adjusted to prevent any one source from dominating a section. The summary prompt also needed some tightening after it inferred something incorrectly. If this is something you’re interested in looking at more closely, I also had it de-personalized and slapped the whole thing into its own github repo. It works well enough for my purposes, but if you decide to use it, you’re on your own.

One of the things it uncovered for me the other day was this article by Brad Wilcox at Compact, which makes the case for getting married earlier rather than later:

In these ways, she is a typical student at Mr. Jefferson’s university. But what makes her really stand out from the crowd at UVA is that she is planning on getting married this year, in November, at the age of twenty-two.

Her early marriage plans did not go over well with her parents, at least not initially. When Lillian told her parents, they “weren’t immediately supportive”—in fact, they were “angry, maybe heartbroken.” She added, “They want what’s best for me, and they defined that as seeing the world, working for [awhile], and ‘realizing my full potential’ before settling down. While I understand the appeal of that [conventional] path—and sure, a random weekend trip to Spain sounds nice—it simply doesn’t measure up to the importance of marriage for me.”

Her parents’ concerns about her marrying young were echoed by many of her professors, friends, and other family members. “Marrying young is [viewed as] abnormal” for many of her college friends and mentors, she said. They think your twenties are for “figuring out who you are,” having fun, and—above all—getting your career launched. One professor at UVA put it this way: “You’re throwing your whole life away. Why would I help you get a job if you’re not going to work that long? You could be something really cool on Wall Street, and you’re choosing marriage instead.”

My wife and I met in college, as first-quarter freshmen, and got married directly after graduation. This seemed like the natural, logical path at the time - the first steps into full adulthood and so on. Wilcox articulates several things we’ve mentioned to each other over the years: going full throttle into married life (properly discerned) is probably the most important thing a young person can do. For starters, it gives both people something outside of themselves to work for. Having children focuses you even more profoundly. Is it a garden path? No, of course not. Like anything else, married and family life have their trials and struggles. But it also seems clear that eternal adolescence is not what we’re made for, and the people I’ve known over the years who have taken a similar plunge are, as a group, happier and more accomplished over the years.