I recently got married. It was a wonderful and magical celebration of
love and community. While we will cherish the memory forever, there is
something else that I have begun to notice and appreciate. Many people have
asked us “hey, has anything changed?” At first I don’t think anything really
did. However, I am beginning to think that it has and is changing. Our
partnership does not, contrary to the conquering youthful skeptic romantics
such as Kierkegaard’s Johannes Climacus in The Seducer’s Diary, end with our
vows. It deepens and continues each and every day much more like Kierkegaard’s
Judge who responds to Climacus arguing the aesthetic and ethical benefits of
marriage. Yet it grows even further in other ways. Granted I must add the
disclaimer that we are but a mere few months into our married life, yet our
awareness and intentions in this regard are essential. We committed even before
our wedding day to a team effort that we continue to practice and challenge,
with which we work and play every day through every mood and circumstance.
Yet I did not fully realize how much community is an important part of
our expression of partnership. The thing that highlighted this for me was being
with family and friends over the holidays. The way that we interacted with each
other and others was an intimate mixing of love, cultured, community, partnered,
and individual expressions. I experience love individually as I experience it
directly and personally. For example, we tend to be fairly tactile and so many
times unconsciously I will touch my wife’s leg, arm, or the small of her back. I
experience the feeling of connection directly and personally in reaching out
and touching her. However, it became clearer to me that we all exist in unique
entities; we are each different worlds of love, molecules of phenomenology in
vastly diverse expressions of relationship or even its absence. During our
wedding I thanked our wedding guests with a similar sentiment that draws us all
together. “Each and every one of you is an essential part of what inspires us.
You are all unique, dynamic and moving love poems in your own right. We are all
on our own journey; learning love, exploring partnership, managing compassion,
connection and development. Whatever that might look like. The day to day simple joys, the ups and
downs, the obstacles, the disappointments, the tripping and falling to the
point of utter failure…and finally the glorious accomplishments, milestones and
achievements further communicate to us that love is an important element of
quality in our lives. Whatever your path of love our collective stories
enrichen not only our lives, but our growth. As we are inspired by, learn from
and love you, we humbly hope that we have stoked the fire in you and consequently
in the ones you touch, personally and professionally. Your struggle through
love’s challenges encourages us to weather the storms of life as we hope ours
encourages you; your compassion and joy energizes us as we hope our energy
brightens you, your process inspires us
to never give up as we hope we inspire you to persevere. Your story becomes our story.”
During the holidays I saw this idea play out in the reflections of
single people hanging out with friends, yearning for a deep connection with someone
else, and whatever that meant for them personally; I heard this in the
reflections of fellow couples sharing their recent move, their travel, their
work, their stories, their interactions with parents, family, friends, each
other, etc.; I felt this in the frustration of coupled and individual discussions
about…a whole host of issues that we experience from day to day and over the
holidays. Yet I think we are starting to come into our own as a married couple,
because we are beginning to exist as a resonant example of love, of
partnership, of marriage, and what it is in all its complexities. I don’t claim
to have the perfect relationship, but we have a strong relationship that uniquely
expresses itself as we interact with other people. Through that interaction we
inspire and we are inspired in turn. I found many of our own conversations
during the holidays reflected on the people we were with and how their story
affected us. Some more than others, but still recognized. One particular
example is the discussion about kids. Seeing friends with kids and seeing them
interact inspired quite a few discussions about when to have kids, what our
common values are around raising kids, the infinite difficulties in parenthood, and even childhood memories. Kid energy,
good and cranky alike, is just infectious at times and especially around the
holidays.
I was drawn to reflect further on how culture or society influences
this conversation as well, in an interaction discussing the viral video of an experimental
and guided interaction between young boys and an unfamiliar girl. The boys were
introduced to the girl, asked a series of questions including what they admired
about her and then asked to slap the girl. Not one of the boys slapped the
girl. Granted the video could have been edited as warranted and has some
further ethical controversies, but it brought up an interesting issue. Society
tells us many things, often that it is ok to be violent, essentially to slap
the girl. Yet none of the boys did so for a host of reasons including “you
shouldn’t hit a girl,” because “I’m a man,” because “I don’t want to hurt
anyone.” Society influences us here in a
myriad of ways: as ethical guidelines, as media messages, as real world
examples, as traditional customs, as proverbs, as social roles, as a constant
and loud cacophony of feedback. Do we experience love for us and for our
partners (follow your heart?) or for others and for society (what society tells us is right?)? What is our real expression of love or
partnership? If you love someone just for the sake of loving someone, it will
never hold a candle to the experience of truly loving someone who loves you
back through all kinds of challenges. Love is a process. It is a conscious choice.
Those boys certainly could have slapped the girl, but didn’t. There were many
messages we heard about what a wedding should be; we shirked many of them and
put together a unique expression of who we are. Despite what society tells us,
we choose to go through the process of loving, of relating to another human
being, of seducing as Kierkegaard’s Climacus, of nurturing within a marriage as
Kierkegaard’s Judge, or of expressing it in our own personal way. Yet we do so
within a very dynamic social environment. For better or worse.
Much like cancer researchers who have clearly shown the genetic
etiology of cancer and who are beginning to explore how cancer develops within
environmental factors, and in diverse environments, the environment is an essential element within which we
exist. Like one’s health, love can be
fit as a fiddle or suddenly turn toxic. It
is very important how I think about it, yet the social environment through
which I interact on a regular basis is also important. I came to realize then
that not only does it matter how I think/feel to me,
but it matters how the culture thinks/feels to the community in which I live. In such a way we continue to develop as a
married couple. Through our constant interaction with a dynamic community that
expresses love in infinite ways, we share the experience of ourselves, of love,
of partnership, of community, of life and we grow. In that sharing no matter
where we are, no matter what our perspective, in being true to ourselves and
our intentions, we affect those with whom we have shared our experience and vice
versa. Therefore in response to Tom Stoppard’s definition
of love from The Real Thing, I would counter that the public knowledge of the couple hood, not of the
combined individual, but through the individual expression of self within the
couple, the real self within a real relationship, in the face of public
audience in its raw truth and scrutiny, is where love is and inspires. This sharing, as
I ended our appreciation at the wedding, “little by little collectively brightens
the world.” Take care, love and be loved.
