So, in philosophy, we have these terms “necessary” and “sufficient”. “Necessary” means a certain thing is needed for an event to happen. “Sufficient” means a certain thing guarantees that event will happen. These categories of “necessary” and “sufficient” are not mutually exclusive, so a lot of new philosophy students, including myself, were confused by the whole thing.
My professor gave the example of fire. Oxygen is necessary for fire to exist, but it is not enough on its own to be sufficient. It also needs fuel, like wood or gasoline, and a catalyst, a spark, in order to exist. So any one of these ingredients is necessary, but not sufficient on its own. However, all of these ingredients are sufficient when they are taken together. That is, they are necessary and jointly sufficient.
However, it wasn’t until my friend’s mom kind of tried to set me up with this guy that I understood it. She says she wasn’t trying to set us up, but this one time I come home from an event with her family and the whole way home we’re listening to this Jewish matchmaker CD and then I’m carsick and drinking water on their couch and she plops down across from me and starting singing this guy’s praises–“He’s so sweet, he just came over out of the blue to mow our lawn for us! And he’s learning Hebrew!”. After that, the times I come over just so happen to be the times he comes over.
I talk to my friend about this turn of events and she says “Yeah, Mom thinks you two would be really good together.” I was horrified. See, he’s a lovely person and all and treats people with kindness and respect and is very generous with his time and labour, but there is no attraction whatsoever on my end. And really, I just want to hang out with my bestie, not be awkward trying to interact with this guy who seems very interested in me who I know is really keen on getting married ASAP because he’s in his mid-twenties now and in the Bible Belt, that is officially old-maid status.
And that’s when it hit me: his qualities are necessary, not sufficient. Do I want to be with someone who is kind? Yes. But I also want to be with someone I am attracted to. “Kind” and “attractive” are not mutually exclusive traits, yet people keep acting like I have to pick one or the other and if I insist on being attracted to the guy then I must not really care about whether or not he is kind. But those qualities are not sufficient. They are necessary and jointly sufficient.
And if person A has the quality of being kind, but there is no attraction, and Person B is attractive to me, but is not kind (of course, it’s difficult for me to be attracted to someone who isn’t kind, but let’s just ignore that for the sake of this thought experiment), then you know which one I pick? Neither! Because picking neither is totally an option!
I’d sure love to have a spouse to do things with and have all kinds of fun and adventures with, and honestly, sex sounds kinda cool too, but you know what? I don’t need that to be happy. I’ve gone a lifetime without sex already and am doing fine, though I do miss kissing and stuff. I have family and friends to go on adventures with (a friend and I are planning our Disneyland trip for one of the summers in the next couple years), I have a cat to snuggle, I’ve got a job I love and I’m getting an education, which means it’s only a matter of time before I get a second job that I love (!!!). I’ve never wanted to get pregnant, so I don’t really feel my “biological clock” ticking and if I really want kids, I can adopt, provided that my financial situation is stable. And between two jobs, I should be able to manage having my own place; it’ll be tight, but it’ll still be my own. So I don’t need a significant other to accomplish most of my major life goals.
I really want to get married and yes, I do have a wedding board on Pinterest, but I want the person I choose to be the one who has everything I’m looking for, not just one thing. And I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I mean, there’s seven billion of us. Surely someone out there fits the bill?
And if nobody does then I guess it’s good that I live in a time and place where I don’t have to marry to survive and that I have such a positive outlook on my life. I can be happy, with or without a husband. I am free.
The Intersection of Everything 