The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg once told a graduating class that the best marriage advice she ever received was from her mother-in-law on her June wedding day in 1954.
“It helps, sometimes, to be a little bit deaf.”
Not exactly the most romantic piece of guidance a young, bride-to-be might be looking for.
I watched the 2018 documentary “RBG” on a flight from Montana to a fly-fishing convention in Virginia with my husband two years ago. The documentary, ahead of her death at age 87 last month, went into detail about the early years of her nearly half-century marriage to her husband, Marty, who she met at age 18 at Cornell University. Ruth would credit Marty as being her best friend and greatest advocate as they were both accepted into Harvard Law School, grew their careers and family, even when Marty was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1957 at age 25. During that period, rather than have Marty drop out of law school, Ruth would go to his classes for him and take notes, while also attending her own classes, all while raising their 2-year-old daughter and nursing Marty through chemotherapy. These were the conditions that she was studying in, as one of nine women in a class of 552 men, going on to become one of the first women to be accepted at the Harvard Law Review.
That’s a lot of stress for two student newlywed parents to make it through and then go on to have almost five, and by all accounts happy, decades together until Marty’s death in 2010. That idea of being “a little bit deaf”, Ruth would go on to say, would also carry into her career, allowing her to forge strong, life-long friendships with others who did not share her beliefs, maybe most famously with fellow Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who disagreed with Ruth on just about every single issue that came before the court, yet spending New Year’s Eve together with their families was a tradition they both upheld for years.
As Election Day 2020 fast approaches, I’ve been thinking about the usefulness of deliberately going a little bit deaf in these final days – I think I’ve actually yearned for this for a long time, I’ve realized, but didn’t know how to allow myself that – luxury? Boundary? But two years after first hearing that quote from Ruth and finding it humorous in a 1950s marriage-advice way, I’ve found myself honing in on it as a mission statement for myself this election season.
I think I get what she was saying: Look at the bigger picture. Choose your battles and zero in. Stay focused and don’t let yourself get drained or sidetracked or chipped away at by petty wars that go personal. Or in another quote of Ruth’s: “When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”
Coming from someone whose career was a study and experimentation in persuasion in the highest court in the land, that’s probably advice worth noting.
A few weeks ago, we rented a vacation home in Wyoming with two of John’s best friends from high school and their families to do a series of day floats on the Snake River. It was a beautiful rental, with chairs lined up on a big deck that looked out to trees just changing colors and the mountains around Jackson in the distance – perfect for morning coffee and reading before packing up the trucks and boats. The living room had this great sectional leather couch in front of the fireplace where we’d flop down after dinners of barbecued Montana elk, and putting the kids to bed, a whiskey or beer in hand. On our final night, I ended up staying up way later than I had planned, just discussing a news story that had come out that day, with one of the guys. He’s a U.S. Army Ranger about to retire at 40, is very smart, and leans more right, while I lean more left. He also makes a point to stay the hell away from social media – which is maybe what made debating feel fresh and fun, in a way that I’d forgotten about. Kind of like I was back in university in the 90s, or sitting in the kitchen of a youth hostel while backpacking around Europe. Back when we debated the big stuff face to face late at night, in our own, faulty, still-forming ideas, rather than just reposting witty memes and photos that are supposed to say our views for us – but too often just end up being another grenade thrown in what feels like a trench war as November arrives.
Even though I had my election ballot on my desk for a week, I found myself delaying in filling it out and taking it in. Maybe I needed a few more days of being “a little bit deaf” so I could stop being so reactive and angry.
I think it’s that I wanted to be my best self before going to the polls, even if, in 2020, that was in my own living room.
