When you think about it, though, it's pretty obvious that Tiger had some learnin' to do. He was raised to be a golf-playing robot by his parents, and by his teenage years, was playing golf at the highest levels of the sport. Before long, he was earning millions playing golf, practicing golf and dealing with sponsors. When did he have time to learn about life?
Somewhere this week, I read a quote from him, via his girlfriend, that he complained of being unhappy in his married life and that being a husband and a father "wasn't all it was cracked up to be." I should have saved the link, because now I can't find it.
What Tiger has fallen victim to is known as a super-replicator -- a belief that we as humans transmit among each other regardless of its factuality, because to not do so might imperil our very existence.
What was this belief? That marriage and children bring happiness to the lives of adults.
It's not that there aren't many aspects of marriage and parenting that are pleasurable, but the reality is that in many moments, being married or raising children isn't as fun, as, say, having sex with a hot cocktail waitress.
But if our society didn't pass along the "marriage and children equal happiness" super-replicator, then what would happen? Fewer marriages and children -- which is why our failure to pass it along threatens our very existence.
So people coo at babies, say things like, "you must be so happy!" and generally send adults the message that, in fact, parenting = happiness. The problem with this is that in the moment that you are up to your eyeballs in diapers or dead tired from chasing the kids, you don't understand why you aren't as happy as everyone says you are supposed to be. And that's where the trouble starts.
For most of us, there are safe ways to reconcile the disparity between the super-replicator and our own experience. We talk with friends, we observe other people, and we generally make it through. Of course, some people turn to booze, drugs, gambling, affairs and the like, as well.
For Tiger, though, he likely hasn't had anyone to share his feelings with, to try to square what he was feeling with what the world was telling him. He got together with his wife in his late-twenties, she was a knockout blonde, what's the problem? We get married, we start a family, life's good. Only when it turns out that Elin is a real person, and that being married isn't all romance and hot sex, and that having babies isn't all cute photo ops, Tiger likely had no safety net.
I'm also guessing that despite his Joe-cool exterior, Tiger is a pretty immature, undeveloped guy. Which would explain why he would be comfortable with cocktail waitresses who demanded little of him and likely allowed him to "be himself." The gorgeous blonde, Swedish wife was who Tiger thought he ought to be married to, in order to live out the super-replicator life that he thought he was supposed to live. Hanging out with cocktail waitresses was probably closer to the real life he was ready to live.
*****
Where did I get all the stuff above? Mainly from reading a great book called "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert. It's about the reality of what does or might make us happy versus what we think will make us happy. I highly recommend it.
As it happens, I found a blogger who liberally quoted from the section of the book that deals with the concept of super-replicators. Here is the key quote:
“Children bring happiness” is a super-replicator. The belief-transmission network of which we are a part cannot operate without a continuously replenished supply of people to do the transmitting, thus the belief that children are a source of happiness becomes a part of our cultural wisdom simply because the opposite belief unravels the fabric of any society that holds it.
No comments:
Post a Comment