Relationships

A friend of mine and I were talking recently... I hope he doesn't mind my posting this. Anyway, we were talking recently about different things. You know, the types of things people talk about, like relationships, life, kids and such. Well, we were talking about his relationship and some of its recent difficulties. He told me that his wife and he had a few arguments about their different interests. How his wife thought his interests in video games and other such activities were somewhat juvenile. My friend is my age... He's an adult with children of his own, goes to work everyday, and that sort of thing. He just happens to enjoy certain cartoons and video games as a form of release and entertainment.

My husband likes Ren & Stimpy. Of all things a person could like, my husband likes Ren & Stimpy. I despise and loathe Ren & Stimpy with a passion. If they had an anti-Ren & Stimpy campaign, I might have joined it once upon a time ago. But, because my husband likes them, I would take myself right back off of that campaign.

When you love someone, you love all of them. I love the fact that my husband can spend 8 hours straight on a video game, even though it might exasperate me... I love the fact that I asked him to read ONE fictional novel, one of any novel really, in the course of our 9 year relationship and that he's been reading it for over a year and a half. I even love the fact that I get to listen to countless, and I do mean countless, Physics lessons even though I hated Physics in high school. I love to watch my husband's excitement over all of the things he loves, no matter how mundane, boring, irritating, or childish some might find those very same things. I find that I now like those things. I like them because they bring him joy. I will cherish anything that brings him joy. Over the years I've found myself asking him questions about things that he finds interest in, even though I don't really care about the subject, just to include myself in the other loves of his life. I listen to stories and jokes about Strongbad, special relativity, computer parts, and I'll even listen about Ren & Stimpy. I love him that much.

To my friend I say... Whether you are interested in cartoons or architecture, video games or museums, computers or books doesn't matter. Just because someone would rather be admiring the many things a painting could represent doesn't make them any smarter than you are... It just means that they have different interests. I think people are intelligent when they are capable of not only expressing their interests, but also at embrassing the interests of others. If all people spent a lifetime knocking down other people because of their interests and beliefs, then the Nazis would have won, prejudice would be an even more rampant problem, and the world of art that some might love so much would be very limited indeed.

And although I'm sure that life doesn't seem very optimistic at the moment... One day you will come to be valued because of your interests, not in spite of them. To those who might have called you juvenile and not understand why you could like the things you do, I remind them that Picasso was not very popular, Van Gogh was very lonely, and Einstein was thought to be quite mad by some. There are many painters throughout history that I'm sure were told by their parents that painting was nothing more than a childhood hobby that they ought to leave behind as they become adults.