When you go through a divorce, what you really need to ask yourself is if you want to be known for worms or evolution.
Not many people love worms. They are dirty and wiggly, though very good for the Earth. Folks don't usually go in search for worms and when they do, it is to sacrifice them on some hook to a fish God of some sort who gulps them down.
Worms are never remembered.
Evolution, on the other hand, is a change. It's a good, meaty, word that has all sorts of positive implications. It is the stuff of spelling bees.
The reason I bring this up, is because of Charles Darwin. Everyone knows the famous naturalist for his work On the Origin of Species and his theory of evolution. You think Darwin. You think evolution. Few people think Darwin and think worms.
Yet, Darwin devoted much of his life - 40 years in fact - to the study of freakin' earthworms.
That monumental voyage on the HMS Beagle was a blip on his radar compared to the time he spent studying worms in his garden - and writing about them. His book on worms, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits sold faster than that evolution one did when it first came out in 1881.
I wouldn't recommend it, unless you are incredibly bored or have insomnia.
But Darwin is not remembered for worms. Though he did some interesting things to study them like yelling at them and getting his son to blast the bassoon for them. I suspect his son would have been playing a heavy metal guitar instead of a bassoon, if that had been invented at the time. But, that's just me.
When you divorce, how do you want to be remembered, for worms or evolution?
Do you want to be one of those people who keeps digging up the worms by telling folks all the badness associated with your divorce? Heck, I don't. There's a reason it's called divorce. It was bad, we get it. If it weren't, you'd still be married.
There came a time when I rolled my own eyes as I found myself slipping into cornering my close friends to tell them about my own divorce crappola. I decided to stop. If I were sick of hearing myself say it, then surely they were tired of listening to me talk about it.
I don't want to be one of those people who walks into a room and the whispered sighs are, "Oh Lord, here she comes again." Those are worm days. Leave the worms in the dirt, and move on. Be evolution. Change, it's a good thing. Be the person people want to hang out with, not the person who always vilifies the ex.
Charles Darwin is attributed with saying, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change."
There is no empirical evidence that he ever said or even wrote this. But it's still a cool thought, a good quote, and not at all to do with worms. Be evolution.
(Enriching music: Revolution, 1967-1970 The Blue Album, The Beatles )