On life partners

by Costas Theocharidis

The hardest part of being a parent is that you have to keep going regardless of how broken you feel inside. Even when life is relentless and has lunged at you with her talons, when people can be deceitful, heartless, impertinent and greedy, and when hope feels distant with everything behind you in flames and nothing but darkness ahead, you need to muster the courage and find the willpower to keep moving.

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Life can be unbearable, exhausting, unfair. And yet, through it all, every small step forward is a sign that we haven’t given up. That we are still fighting on – at times with a lack of enthusiasm – despite the daily mayhem, still holding on as we navigate through chaotic situations, remaining defiant when crisis in the form of a massive, fire-breathing monster, is staring us down.

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Kids can bring you some of the happiest moments in your life, but the hard, unfiltered truth is that you will never be free from anxiety and worry.

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Hence, with what parenthood has in store for us, probably the most important decision we are called to make in our lifetime is choosing our life partners. Ideally, it will be somebody who is better than us, somebody we can look up to, somebody who will hold us accountable for our actions, somebody we can rely on, trust and respect, somebody who’s got our back when life hits us with a 106 mph fastball.

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Elena, my beautiful, intelligent, and graceful life partner of 20 plus years has been a stabilizing force for me. Together we have become the architects of our family’s success. And I owe it to the fascinating concept of autocatalysis.

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Chemistry was my favorite subject in high school. Autocatalysis is a chemical phenomenon where the product of a chemical reaction also acts as a catalyst for that same reaction. As the reaction progresses, more of the catalyst is produced, accelerating the reaction rate. You accomplish A and suddenly because of the boost that kicks in can make what you accomplished run on and on essentially giving you A+B+C for a good while.

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That’s what feels like having Elena in my life. A woman, both kind and strong, delicate yet tough, and able to navigate life’s challenges with grace and resilience. Elena is my steel magnolia and I love her to eternity.