Skip to main content

YOLO vs. Delayed Gratification

YOLO vs. Delayed Gratification

Though the old adage “opposites attract” may sound romantic, I have learned “but similarities sustain” is more accurate. Doug and I are similar in more ways than we are opposites, which is why I think we get along so well. However, there is one way I have found we are very different – the way our brains work. He can sit in front of the TV with the news blaring while at the same time watching a video (also loudly) on his phone and somehow be listening to and keeping up with both. I walk into the room and immediately have sensory overload and get a tick in my eye that I am sure is a warning that a seizure is imminent. I don’t know how he does it. 

As a child, his mom told people he was “hyperactive”… I guess ADHD wasn’t a named thing yet. He had a hard time in school, he says. Couldn’t sit still, spent a lot of time doodling or staring out the window thinking about the rocket he was going to launch after school. He tried to describe his brain to me the other day, saying imagine a whole wall of TV screens, all showing different things, all brightly lit and at max volume. One after another comes to the forefront, briefly taking up the whole screen for a few seconds before going back to the wall only to have another take its place. Over and over, all day. Some days worse than others. If my brain did that I would be exhausted and need to return to bed by 9 am.   

I know we medicate our ADHD kids now a lot of the time, seeing it as something that needs to be “fixed” or “contained.” And I get it. It’s hard for them to sit still in school, hard to concentrate, making it hard for them to learn and likely distracting others from learning, too. (However, I wonder if that is more of a statement on the way we try to force them into the already-established system in place, rather than finding a way that fits their style of learning…but that’s a topic for another blog!) But in getting to know Doug, I also know it fuels his creativity. He has a million interests and knows something about nearly everything because at some point he has been interested in it enough to learn about it. And he has done more things, worked more places, learned more skills, and tried more new things than anyone I know. Does that need to be “fixed”?    

In contrast to my tendency for delayed gratification – save money for months for something I want, save my favorite food on my plate for last, only take a Tylenol after hours of suffering – Doug’s attitude is “YOLO! Why wait??” Luckily, we agree on finances, so his “why wait?” on buying something new means he sells something he doesn’t want anymore (that tuba is soooo yesterday’s news) rather than go into debt for that new obsession. But what I have learned is this: My way is not always the best way! His tendency toward impulsiveness is not always bad; and my tendency to wait until all ducks are in a row is not always good. My favorite food ends up cold when I save it ‘til last. And having a headache for hours hurts. Marriage is humbling. And stretching. And lovely. 

Besides, when you don’t meet one another until you’re in your late 40s, time is short. YOLO seems like a better plan for maximizing your years together. Even if one of you just has to have a paramotor.   

Comments

  1. Wayne ThompsonNovember 20, 2023 at 9:41 PM

    I tend to bounce back and forth between those two worlds. In either approach, you are both validating what the writer of Ecclesiastes observed many years ago, "...there is a time for every event under heaven...", Eccl. 3:1

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turns out... You can go home

Turns out . . .  You can go home ❤ There’s a specialness to waking up in my childhood home as an adult. It feels safe in a way nowhere else does, or probably ever will. It’s not that I feel “unsafe” at my own home or even other places, but there’s a nostalgic, heart-warming, glowy feeling that goes beyond physical safety into a deeper place. A place where my heart feels safe. Where I know that I know that I know I am loved, deeply and without reservation or conditions, because I was loved here in that way as a child. Where the connections were made at an early age that I can mess up and still be loved. That I am safe to be myself, while at the same time always encouraged to be the best version of myself. Where I was told “I’m proud of you” over and over, as recently as last night... And where I saw this behavior modeled day after day in the very people creating this safe space for me. I don’t doubt that I would still feel this way with the same people, but in a new or different h...
1 comment
Read more
Write Your Story With Intention I recently read a book, What Alice Forgot, where a woman lost 10 yrs of memories after a bump on the head and now found herself in the middle of an ugly divorce and not remembering her three kids. She feels the same toward her husband as when they were newly married (because in her mind they just were), but he has the memories of the years of biting remarks and arguments and hostility and can’t just “forget” and go back, despite her pleading with him to do just that. She finds herself ashamed at what kind of person she has actually become and the bitterness of her once-loving husband toward her. How did this happen? Where along the way did it start to derail? What compromises or insensitive jabs or apathy led to it? It’s definitely easier if we can AVOID the relationship decline, rather than try and go back (regardless of whether there is memory loss or not!). If each of us could get a glimpse ahead 10 years in our relationship, of our habits and ch...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Charmed Life

A Charmed Life An Interview with Barbara Kerr I can completely lose track of time while sitting and talking to an older adult (which, incidentally, I have to keep redefining the older and older I get!). I don’t know what it is, but I find a lifetime lived with all the experiences and loves and successes and failures and losses and lessons irresistibly interesting. I know a lot of times older people get overlooked and easily dismissed, viewed only through the lens of their current age or limitations or abilities, forgetting a whole life was lived prior to our meeting them. A life just like the one we are living - with hopes and dreams, families and careers, talents and achievements. Sometimes even with significant contributions to our community or to the world. And often they are still making them! We forget that beyond being a wealth of knowledge from lived experience, many have led downright interesting and exciting lives. Some were trailblazers in their field or firsts in their famil...
7 comments
Read more