Passionate Pursuit

At dinner last night, Brenda mentioned that she had been talking about me with some of my other friends. They were "concerned." They have been, for years. They are all academics, with the comfort and job security that comes with tenure. I have no regular source of income. They are all homeowners. I rent. They have all spent more than a decade here in California, and have the networks of friends and neighbors that come to surround people who settle in and stay a while. I'm a relative newcomer, and knew no one very well when I first arrived for what was supposed to be a one-year sabbatical.

Not long ago, I had what they had. I had a university job, with tenure. I lived in the same small town for more than two decades. I had circles of friends and a home that I owned.

Then I walked away from it all to pursue my passion - the study of the place of people who are single in contemporary American society. I live in that place, and I have all my life.

For many years, I kept a private mental inventory of observations that seemed worth pondering. For example:

• A colleague and I were hired at the same time, in the exact same position, and continued working for years. He can leave his Social Security benefits to his spouse when he dies; mine will go back into the system.
• Candidates stand aside a spouse, as if to say, "Vote for me - I'm married!" But what I really want are candidates whose devotion is to the welfare of the people they are serving.
• Couples treat themselves to wedding spectacles that honor no boundaries of extravagance or self-indulgence; yet it is single people who are stereotyped as selfish.

I also clipped headlines trumpeting the transformative power of matrimony. Citing the latest studies, they announced that miserable and immature single people would become happy, healthy, and long-living pillars of the community, if only they would wed. Then I tracked down the professional journals and read the original research reports. I discovered that just about all of these matrimaniacal claims were grossly exaggerated or just plain wrong.

I started to go public with my once-private collection, discussing, debating, and publishing what I had found. Some of the reactions to my work were immensely gratifying. Others were not. Colleagues protested that I could not study singles impartially because I was single; they had no problem with the legions of married people who study marriage. A job that I coveted was dangled before me - with the stipulation that I expunge from my application materials any mention of my interest in singles. A listener who had just heard me on the radio e-mailed to suggest that I get a tubal ligation.

I hate being criticized, but the more people disparaged me and my message, the more determined I became not to be dissuaded. If that meant forsaking a guaranteed paycheck in order to devote nearly all of my time to this new passion, then so be it.

I guess that's why my friends seem to think I'm fearless. Aren't you scared, they ask, over and over again. They know I'm stealing from my savings to pay the rent, at a time in my life when I should be building, not depleting, my retirement funds.

I work for hours, seven days a week, but almost nothing I do feels like work. I don't own a home, but I'm still in the beach house I rented when I first arrived, and I can see the Pacific Ocean from my desk.

What's so fearless about that?