The Deeper Kind of Differences…

For you who have already made your marriage, there is simply this to be said: Make it work. In marriage there is no ready-made formula for success. It requires character and consideration, honor and understanding, faith and forbearance. No two people were ever alike enough to avoid adjustments altogether. And no two people were ever able to make one another over altogether. Once a marriage is made, make it work. Make a home. Rear a family. Find your happiness in what you have, and in times of trouble look not to see how the ties can be severed, but how they can be saved.

And now as to you who are not yet married, to you who may not be until another year, or another time far future: Because marriage so completely and so permanently affects the lives of all concerned ⎯ the lives of the living, the lives of those yet unborn, the lives of children, of loved ones, and of society itself ⎯ in this one step one could hardly look too far ahead ⎯ at the lasting kind of likenesses ⎯ at the deeper kind of differences.

The ideals we have in our hearts, the principles by which we move and make decisions, the convictions we have concerning life, the very grain of our belief, so affects our sense of values, our choices, our very peace and purpose, that, in the constant closeness of living life together, every act and every utterance could either smooth the course of life, or go against the grain. Every standard and every conviction could either combine in common purpose or be opposed in endless argument ⎯ an argument of the very soul inside. And with the prospect of a whole life to be lived, of children to be reared, a family to be taught, friends to be chosen, and with endless everlasting considerations even beyond those that we can now foresee, it would be folly to forget differences of ideals and basic belief.

Again to you who have made your marriage: Make it work. Let petty differences be set aside. But to you whose marriages are unmade: consider soberly the deeper kind of differences and the longer everlasting values.