(gentle music)
- I was in Gelson's, which is an expensive supermarket,
kind of like Whole Foods in Los Angeles,
and I was buying chicken that had presumably
died in a poultry hospice, of natural causes,
because my wife, Jean, is a good person.
Now my wife Jean is the exact opposite of me.
We could not be more opposite.
She is so happy and she sees the world as a great place.
She wakes up every day and just has this great,
remember that video a while ago?
The guy who like, the double rainbow guy right,
he sees the two rainbows and he's like oh my god,
and it went viral because we all found it funny.
We found his joy and wonder and excitement about life funny
because it's weird to feel good about the world
when it's a terrible, terrible place.
So anyone who's happy is weak.
That's the way I've always thought.
Happiness is weak
and my wife doesn't like that
and I could tell you about our marriage,
I could how we met,
I could tell you, you know,
our wedding day which was great but it's not interesting.
It's happy so it's boring to me.
What I will talk about is,
one day we had our friends over
and they brought their little kid named Kale,
with a K for real,
and he started to grab the TV,
which was like a flat screen TV,
lower and he started to pull it on the thing
and he was smushing grapes into the wall
and the parents just sat there laughing
and me and my wife where like what are you--
There's a thing where they won't, we're not saying no,
and we're not saying can't,
we'll never use those,
and Jean and I start joking like when we have kids,
if we have kids,
we're only saying no or can't.
We're like, no! Can't!
Like you know what I mean,
we're gonna raise our kids the way we were raised
with fear and shame and before long,
that joking sort of becomes a conversation,
and now we're talking about having kids.
And I'm not sure I want kids.
I'm not so sure I should have kids
and I don't know if it's good
to bring more people into this world
where there's too many of us and it's terrible.
But I also think, a lot of people our age,
we're older, they don't have kids.
Maybe their baby parts are broken so maybe ours are.
So, we'll try but it'll probably take a long time
and it's fine.
The very first time we tried,
Jean got pregnant.
We didn't tell anyone.
We did what all the books say not to do.
We didn't tell anyone for three months
and then finally three months later,
we went to New York where we're both from the east coast
and we told our family and it was a great night
in this Italian restaurant downtown
and my mom was there and Jean's dad
and cousins and my brother and it was great.
Everyone toasts us and they were so happy for us
and it was perfect.
We go back to L.A.,
that night feeling great, super happy,
and in the middle of the night,
Jean says, I think something's wrong.
She feels some pain and there's some bleeding,
and so we go to a hospital
but we don't know which hospital to go to.
We haven't, there's no planning for that,
no one tells you about what to do it something goes wrong.
The midwives in Eagle Rock didn't give us that book
and so we go to very close hospital because of the pain
and it's terrible, it's the middle of the night,
there's gunshot victims, it's a horr--.
It's a complete shit show,
and the doctor is this Austrian guy
who doesn't speak a word of english
and he's cold and he's mean
and he doesn't tell us what he's doing
and we keep asking questions
and he acts like we've done something wrong,
and right around when I'm starting to lose it,
I'm just about to lose it,
the word miscarriage gets said for the first time,
and I'm railing.
I'm going off on the healthcare system
and the Republicans and how come
they don't give Obamacare a chance
and why are they so racist and what's wrong our country
and blah, blah, blah and as I'm ranting,
I look over at Jean,
who's on a cot,
the one going through this,
and she's crying. She's sad.
But she's also got a smile,
and she's like, it's okay.
It's gonna be okay.
She's comforting me,
and in that moment,
I realize that my entire world view is wrong.
Happiness isn't weakness.
That the way I've always seen the world is wrong
and that her way is right.
That it's better to be happy,
that it's harder in a world that's terrible to have joy,
and that that takes strength.
And then this is the part of the story usually where then,
somebody says, well, a couple months later,
we just had sex and she got pregnant,
and we have two kids now,
but that's not our story.
That didn't happen.
We're never gonna kids.
We tried, and over the next two years it was really hard.
Jean had five more miscarriages.
I had two heart surgeries.
Jean's dad died a couple months ago.
We did IVF a couple of times
and spent any money that we were gonna use,
you know, for a down payment on a house,
on all these procedures that we had to do over the year.
And it's been really hard,
and that's the way I would normally present it,
but ever since that moment,
in that first hospital where I saw Jean smiling at me,
I realize, there's another way to look at it.
We had those miscarriages,
but we're going to adopt a child
and that's, that's amazing.
And yeah, we spent of lot of money
but we also got a lot of financial help from my dad
and that really brought us closer together
that he cared that much.
And yeah, my heart problems were terrible
but I got them fixed.
I had the surgeries.
I ran a half marathon last year which I had never done
because all of a sudden I had a better heart.
And that's the right way to see the world.
And I realized, that again, happiness is not weakness,
that Jean was right.
Which in my mind,
means I won the institution of marriage.
- [Male Vocalizer] Soulpancake.
(mellow electronic music)