all around the limbo world

Sociology. I was never one for the subject. I took a particularly horrible intro class freshman year that completely turned me off to it. The teacher was pompous and pretentious, and the reading was painfully dry. Plus the final exam was at 8 a.m. That alone was enough to vow to never take another sociology course again.

Until this semester. My sister is studying to be a marriage and family therapist and/or child psychologist, so I enrolled in Sociology of the Family to learn a little bit about her field. Needless to say, I have been pleasantly surprised with the class thus far.

That said, I my change of heart is more towards a love-hate relationship. I enjoy learning about family structures and breaking down myths of the family as a social institution, but the subject matter is almost depressing in a way. It's saddening to learn that any conception I had about family or relationships is false - it almost hurts really. Think of it this way:

"A little fact is worth a whole limbo of dreams."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Superlative," Lectures and Biographical Sketches

Take one of our readings from last week, Martin King Whyte's "Choosing Mates - The American Way," for example. Whyte studied the history of dating and current dating practices and then made conclusions about its effectiveness in choosing a marriage partner. His reserach pointed to the conclusion that dating is a "crap-shoot," that people that marry their first love are much more likely to achieve happiness than those who shop around.

As a somewhat of a serial dater, that conclusion is a bit upsetting. More accurately, as a serial single, that conclusion almost made me cry. I met – and left – my first love in high school, so that doesn’t leave much hope for me finding lasting companionship, according to Whyte, anyway. That simplistic conclusion placed my dream of carrying a bouquet of red tulips at my wedding in that mysterious area where, according to some Christian faiths, the souls unbaptized babies reside – in limbo.

How sad, really.

But then Whyte tossed in another fact to throw everything into limbo again. In a closing statement that I find paradoxically optimistic, he concludes, “Mate selection may not be a total crap-shoot … if dating does not work, love perhaps does.”

And just like that, everything’s in a new limbo.

Yeah, its definitely a love-hate relationship with Sociology. Cheers.