Odds-wise

To me there’s nothing quite like being in a church watching a wedding take place to make me think about odds. This weekend as I sat there looking at these two people getting asked the standard round of questions: do you take, will you honor, do you pledge to love (I do, I do, I do), my brain couldn’t really quite wrap itself around the fact that it’s possible for two people to find each other at the exact right place at the exact right time and agree about things in terms of their lives forever-wise.

I mean, we’re talking about for-as-long-as-you-both-shall-live in a world where most of us don’t like to feel committed to anything much beyond the weekend, (and when it comes to love, well, are any of us ever really planning ahead?). I listened as the declarations ranged across the spectrum of health and illness, prosperity and unemployment, to the inevitable drastic flux on the good times v. bad times scale of things ending with the ultimate question: in light of all this, will you remain? And there they were both saying yes. Yes emphatically before God and everyone else with lots of money gone on invitations and venue fees with too many Tiffany’s candlesticks and pieces of flatware piling up on their kitchen table back home.

I sat there and thought about life and love odds-wise, and by the time they got to the you-may-now-kiss-the-bride part I figured that you probably have a better chance hitting the lottery than finding yourself up there saying yes to all that and really meaning it (and having the other person really mean it, too), and be able to look back years later knowing you were able to make it to death do you part. Because I think that’s the way it is odds-wise if you know what you’re looking for and don’t want to settle for anything less. How great can the probability really be when we’re all scared and confused and messed up and selfish and stupid most of the time anyway? At weddings I really feel like you ought to be up there acting like one of those people on the evening news in Gary, Indiana or someplace, in just total absolute shock at the sheer fortuitous luck of having struck it big. What were the chances?!

While I’m not typically big gambling-wise because the purchase of a lottery ticket is, from the standpoint of classical economics, foolish (did The Wealth of Nations have a chapter on marriage?), I do realize that in order to ever win one does, at some point, actually have to play the game. Yes you can bemoan odds and statistics all you want, but if you’re too scared and confused and messed up and selfish and stupid to at least get in line and pay the dollar for your ticket, well, you simply just can’t expect the windfall will find you eventually (in fact, I’d venture to say it will be lost to you forever).

So as the happy couple passed by me on their way back down the aisle I figured it’s best to go about the daily business of your life and from time to time take a chance on some of those numbers you have a particularly good feeling about and hope for the best.

A crapshoot? You bet. But that’s just the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.