Writing Wednesday: It Will Get Better

About ten years ago, I went to a marriage class taught by a professor from a local university. One of the studies he talked about tracked a large set of couples who were considering divorce. It tried to get as much information as possible about the couples, and then five years later, the same couples were re-interviewed. Apparently, the study could not find any significant factors that predicted whether or not the couples would divorce. What the professor found more interesting was that whether or not they got divorced, five years later, almost every couple said that they were happier. His conclusion? That there are ups and downs in marriage and that many times, happiness isn't a result of the marriage being good or bad. It's a result of the natural wave pattern of good and bad that happens in any life. He told the couples in the class that they should remind themselves, “it will get better,” when things were bad.

I have thought about this a lot as the years have passed. I think it applies to writing as well as it does to marriage. Maybe it would be more useful to simply accept a more yoga-like acceptance of the stress of being stretched into a new shape for the future challenges that await us. We can choose to stretch less or more, or not at all, perhaps. We can refuse to change. But that isn't really the way to happiness. Mostly, when we notice we are unhappy, in our writing lives or in any other part of our lives, it can be useful to remember that “it will get better.” Even if we don't do anything to change, it will probably get better. Or maybe we will do tiny things to grow that we don't even notice, and it will get better.

I am not trying to argue here that there are no marriages—or writing problems—that need more attention than the hope that “it will get better.” I know that some things require some drastic surgery. But a lot of the time, we stress about things that will get better on their own. We go to the doctor for colds right when the cold is about to get better on its own. The doctor does nothing, but we think she does because that's when we get better. (Antibiotics don't help colds, BTW.) Pain from a hard workout might respond to drugs, massage, or heat. But it also will mostly just get better left on its own to heal. The winter doesn't last forever. Neither does the summer heat. As Scarlett O'Hara would say, tomorrow is another day. And I would add, it's likely to be a better one.