January 17, 2010
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Your words light up my life
Sometimes I have to write down what I think because otherwise I forget who I am.
There are many joyful parts of the world where we are all silly and stupid and have lots of fun, but other parts of the world are dark and terrifying. Sometimes it is terrifying to be around people, because after all, what if they don't like us? It is terrible when people look at you and think, "(snort) What an idiot!" It is like they are casting their vote that we shouldn't exist.
Sometimes I can hear myself worry . . if enough people cast their vote against me, will I not exist anymore?
It is also terrifying that we might end up having lived the wrong way. What if there is a truth of everything, and we don't know it? What a breathtaking tragedy that would be, to think we went through life and missed the actual point of it all. Our minds ought to freeze and our eyes be downcast and full of sadness at the prospect that this might be how things are.
The one fear I often forget is that I am afraid that I might get married because I am attracted to the idea of marriage, and not to whomever I marry. It is a very scary thing to devote your whole life to another person. To imagine doing so for confused and inadequate reasons ought to haunt us all at some point amidst our incessant dreaming of a perfect and magical romance.
I'm not actually sure what it would mean to say "I want to get married someday" when you don't know the person you might be married to. Isn't a person supposed to be the object of your desire, and not a concept? Because if you decide early on that you want to get married, don't you end up loving the concept more than you do the person you plug into the concept?
That's why I think it is best to pretend that marriage does not exist. That way I am not constantly thinking about girls I can fit into an imagined life, as if they were a means to some other end. After all, shouldn't I have been best friends with whomever I marry in a world where marriage didn't even exist? Otherwise, the reason you marry is not so much the other person as it is marriage.
What I imagine is loving a girl so much, we have to invent the idea of marriage. We would get to a point where even if we lived on a planet where no one had even thought of the idea of devoting themself to just one other person, we would do it.
If there isn't a person who makes you want there to be the possibility of living your whole life with just one person, the idea of marriage does not seem worth it to me.
These are lofty thoughts, perhaps unrealizable by anyone. But that's perfectly fine with me: maybe my ideals and I are incompatible with the universe. We did not ask to be put into this specific universe. We are not going to change because we were.
And now that I've written it down, hopefully I won't forget it.
Comments (10)
those are really great ideas. i think people fall in love because they are in love with the idea of love. I would rather be in love with a person for who they are.
That's a great way to look at it! I hope you can find that person who brings the love and peace you are seeking! And may the search be fun, too.
Your posts are astounding. Man, why didn't I find you earlier. I agree with majority of that, if not all. It's brilliantly said. I think people fall in love because the like the idea of love rather than actually loving that person. But thats part of human nature, somethings you cannot change, and I think that's one of them. But if you really are able to put aside the idea of love, and can see the person for who they are, then your super lucky, cause you might have just found true love.
Great post!
i understand the need to write it down lest we forget. This makes me think about my desire to be with a mate. Husband, what have you. I would be fine with not being married. I like the idea of being with that "someone" more than the idea of someone fitting into our preconceived molds. We can't help but try to envision what life with that "someone" would be like. Since visualizing the goal helps us achieve them I like to remind myself that that someone will be who they are. And life rarely turns out just how you imagined it was going to anyway. Still, I wonder if imagination is a gift or a curse.
write away
Oh man, your thoughts on being attracted to the idea of marriage as opposed to being attracted to the person hit really close to home right now. I've been thinking about them the past few days, and it will probably be something that sticks with me for a while. Thanks for putting these words out there.
Wow.
2.6667 years later...Yesterday I was sitting at my desk Facebooking my life away and my roommate came in with a glass of whiskey and water and he sat on the floor and leaned against the door and we talked about marriage, and he wondered what the point of it was, anyway -- sex? companionship? -- and I thought about your words in this post."What I imagine is loving a girl so much, we have to invent the idea of marriage..."To this day it's the most profound and practical thing I've read on marriage. Not that I read a lot about marriage anymore, but still. Thanks.
This is the one I won't forget.