As a younger woman, love was something I legislated with carefully crafted guidelines. I had an actual rule book and in it were scribbles of expectations, boxes to be checked, standards, you know, general parameters for assessment. But! Where I attempted to act the law maker, I found love to be quite the rebel: nonconforming, full of mischief, poking jesting fingers at my noble intentions. I found, in the most jarring and inconvenient ways that love was not something I could crease and fit into my pocket, it wasn’t something I could grab a fist of and march off into the future with.
Many times it was messy. Other times it was simply not what I expected. On some occasions, love was a weight I would not even bother to bear.
Why? I often wondered to myself. Why couldn’t I meet someone who would fit neatly into my life? Who would not shake the balance I have spent an eternity to achieve. Someone who could complement my craving for humour and quiet. Who says the right words all the time and has the same interests as I have? My kind of perfect!
My frustrations mounted with every crush I had, every friend I met, every man with whom I accidentally locked eyes with in the banking Hall. The first hello was an interview. Conversations were screened. I was always waiting, heart in my hand for the first sign of not measuring up. And sure as anything, it was always there. Because nobody is perfect and humans are not created from scraps of romantic fantasy.
Naturally, time gives perspective or maybe it is driving home on a silent night to an empty bed. Either way, I had since reconsidered these ideologies until some conversations jarred me back to them. One was a declaration by a person I know on Facebook, stating with animated righteousness that he would never marry a child of divorced parents. Maybe because people carry the mistakes of their parents in their genes or because people from loving homes never have crisis in their relationships. The second was from a comment thread from several weeks ago, where a Facebook friend mentioned his interactions with women who emphatically refuse to date younger men and with men who are unreasonably averse to loving richer women.
Undoubtedly these are prejudices shaped by culture and society. They are perceptions we have over time polished to a brilliant shine, so that the very things that exist to reduce our chances at happiness look as attractive and acceptable as possible.
I wonder if we know this is a thing we are doing: fitting love into a box. I wonder if we know that in these little ways we are trying to legislate things we have no control over. I remember having a similar conversation with an uncle who reminded me that there was a time marriages were contracted only after intense family investigations. A man or woman would present his betrothed and the family would launch these so called investigations into the history of the other person. Things like if they had madness or epilepsy in their family. Things like whether or not there is at least one Catholic priest to evidence a lineage tethered to Christianity. These information they sought, as he told me, was their way of ensuring they slept better at night, knowing their children were in good hands. Except that sometimes, love and happiness hide at the other side of an abomination.
We talked and laughed about a lady in our town who had run off with her lover, after the parents refused them to marry because of some family history. Today they are happy. And even if they are not, it will be for one of the many other reasons that tear people apart, not because his grandfather had mental issues.
A part of me understands the need to grapple for control. A man may not want to marry a wealthier woman because he feels it interferes with his ego. A woman may refuse to marry a younger man, or a person who earns less than an expected margin. And everybody would be well within the right of their choices. Yet, when love comes wearing a different face, as it sometimes will, there is no need to despise or reject it.
I think of my friend who fell in love with everything we dreaded and laughed about, who married her love and lives happy today, with two toddlers as offsprings of that union. Recently I wondered what would have happened if she decided to play it by the book, if she waited for the Prince that looked closest to the rules. This is inspiring because I feel that is how life should be lived, embraced with hearty child-like openness. To give love a chance regardless of the many shapes or forms it might take. To ignore its history, despise its past, abandon teenage fantasies and if it calls for it, throw out the rule book altogether.
0 comments:
Post a Comment