The Hero’s Journey – A wedding Toast for Life

This was the wedding toast I gave at my brother’s wedding last week. I wanted to convey the struggle and hardship of marriage while also saying it in an upbeat way and not getting kicked off the stage for giving a downer toast.

The audio quality on the video is a bit rough to here is the transcript below:

Thank you, it is an honor to be here. In an event like this, it is good to talk a little philosophy. And that is good because had I not been a Navy Diver I’d probably be a philosopher.

One of the themes in philosophy is the theme of the Hero’s Journey. The story goes something like this. A young man leaves his family, faces hardship and fears, concurs his passions and sacrifices his desires. He then perseveres through struggle and experiences failure. The young man kills the dragon, marries the princess and returns to his village a stronger, wiser and better man for it.

And in a fairy tale that is where the story ends. But in the heroes, journey the cycle just continues.

The young lady on the heroes journey sacrifices her wants and desires she sacrifices her naps and rather than spending her one week vacation in Hawaii sipping fruity drinks on the beach she spends the week camping, up in Mount Hood and sleeping out of a Chevy truck and becomes a better, stronger and wiser woman for it.

The young man on the hero’s journey sacrifices his wants and desires and sells that bachelor truck and uses the money to buy a pony for his wife, and becomes a better, stronger and wiser man for it.

The young man on the hero’s journey sacrifices his wants and desires and rather than spending a weekend with his buddies camping, hiking and skiing he rather spends that weekend decorating his backyard for a purple pony birthday party for his 4-year-old daughter and becomes a better, wiser and stronger man for it.

So, on behalf of Carl and Nancy, Rich and Kim, and every other married couple welcome to your 1st step of the hero’s journey. We are really glad you are on the journey with us.

Here is to David and Jana

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