ICOS

Tips for Personal Growth:

To understand yourself = write.
To think more clearly = meditate.
To improve your mood = exercise.
To reduce stress = practice mindfulness.
To build self-confidence = challenge yourself.

Why do you need marriage? You need marriage just like you need other social institutions. Marriage is a great burden and responsibility as well as a great opportunity. It is a burden and responsibility because as a married couple, you are going to face together everything that life can throw at you. The difference between a casual affair, let us say, and a marriage, is that the casual affair is all milk and honey. It is all pleasure — although it very rarely works out that way. That is the theory. Whereas in marriage, you have to contend with the harsh realities of all the dimensions of life. But you want to take that on voluntarily, and you want to share that with someone. If you do that properly within the confines of a marriage, then you have someone to weave together the rope of the narrative of your life. You have someone to bounce yourself off of, and you have someone to improve yourself in a relationship with, and you have someone that you have to take into consideration like you should take yourself into consideration. And you have someone that you have to take into consideration over the longest possible span of time. What that means is that you are forced, in a real sense, to perform the kind of sacrifice of impulsive hedonism that produces true maturity.