Marriage

Marriage is an ideal, a hope, a dream.

An impossible one.

Marriage starts with two people: two individuals with different tastes, preferences, inclinations, drives, desires and ambitions. These people choose to commit themselves unconditionally and without reserve to each other, to put the welfare of their spouse and their marriage above their own, with the understanding, the trust, the faith that their spouse does the same. They agree to forgo their own personal interests and desires for that of this new entity, this joint venture, again assuming that the other person does too. Through this process, the happiness of both parties increases: they support each other, care for each other, make each other happy, meet each others' needs. Well, that's the idea at least.

Critical to this arrangement is trust. Without it, the whole scheme simply falls apart. Therein lies its weakness. If one party violates the trust the whole premise of marriage vanishes, it stops making sense, it becomes a sucker's game: who can fool the other, play the game and get the most out of it. The most trusting and gullible person loses.

It seems like a bad idea, doesn't it? I mean who would agree to such an arrangement, given what we know of human nature.

And yet we marry, by the millions each year. For many it ends up being the sucker-game described above: trust is broken, needs unmet, promises forgotten. The hurt is too great, the betrayal too deep or the unmet needs are simply to great to ignore. This usually ends in divorce, separation. Other times people carry on in abject misery, driven by a sense of duty, obligation, cowardice or simple inertia.

For a lucky few, it's easy; whether by temperament or good luck, there are no significant temptations, disappointments, they always see their spouse as the beautiful desirable person they were when they met. These sentiments are reciprocated and everyone is happy. Maybe I'll meet such a person some day.

Then there is a third category: people for whom marriage works, but only because they work at it, really, really hard. For these people, subjugating their desires, preferences, drives for a greater good, an ideal, an abstract notion and promise is not easy. Not at all. Yet, they fight the good fight every day, and they win... mostly. Their unhappiness and disappointment occasionally eats at their soul until they don't think they can stand it anymore. Yet they do. They choose to love their spouse, to overlook their foibles and shortcomings, to remain true to them in spirit as well as in action. They choose to deny themselves freedoms and feelings they yearn for. They do so not because they are not tempted to pursue their own interests, but because they fundamentally believe in the hopelessly naive ideal that two people can "find someone to love and make it last" (Rush- "Ghost of A Chance"). In the process of undertaking this struggle, of making the right choices, of choosing to actively love their spouse, something occasionally happens. They sometimes discover that they actually do love their spouse, they are reminded of what brought them together in the first place, of what truly binds them together. Love is a complex thing. After a while the butterflies leave, replaced by something else, something more enduring, more subtle, but no less powerful. This is the love that can be rediscovered and renewed daily.

Marriage is like Faith: it is the unreasonable hope (hope not based on reason) that something more exists, something more profound than what appears at the surface. Why is the sky blue? is it due to Raleigh scattering or is it because God wanted there to be something beautiful for us to look at? The faithful may believe the first, but they hope for the second. The married person may believe that marriage is a financial, sexual, housing and child-rearing arrangement, but they can hope there is something else: something that transcends the practical, or even romantic. Marriage, like Faith, makes us human.

The people in this last group are either idiots or heroes. I choose the latter. I would call them "lucky", but that would insult the hard choices they make every day they live. They have much more than "luck": they have character, strength, integrity and courage.

There are no guarantees, no assurances that even after all their efforts these heroes will succeed in their tasks. Sometimes marriages fail despite the best effort of all involved. Even heroes are human, ultimately limited by their own needs, finite capacities, personal histories. But damn it, they're trying!

So here is a salute, a tribute to those people who keep this irrational and absurdly ridiculous idea of marriage alive through work, determination and guts.

May you find your reward in the happiness you reap growing old with someone you love, in the best, deepest, most active sense of that word.