The damn love and the goddamn marriage

My mom still talks in wonder, how as a kid, I climbed a fragile tree and was sitting directly above a well when she saw me. Sparks of childhood, perhaps. I'm sure every mom has numerous such things to tell about her kid.

However the sparks don't continue for long, maybe because we grow out of those or because life's responsibilities creep over us. And as we realize those responsibilities, we start to stay away from adventures that could cause liabilities to ourselves or to people around us. We self-impose restrictions on our own freedom that can otherwise hinder us from catering to those responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities are true, and are probably related to our life's purpose if there was any, but many of those are false, and are probably related to our attachments.

As we grow even older, we may also develop what I would like to call the "detachmental indifference", that helps us reach a more mature, more stable state, from where, doing or not doing something, or having or not having something, does not make a significant difference to us. We may not perfect this for a long time, so we may try to combine the partial indifference with our conscience, to guide us during uncertain moments till then.

When I was possibly at this stage, I found myself in many interesting dilemmas. While I didn't want to leave existing false responsibilities unfulfilled, I was so bent on not creating new such ones. While I didn't want to withdraw from existing attachments, I was so bent on not forming new ones. But then there are some things you can't resist beyond a point, especially when you don't know how to. Voila, I've now decided to fall prey to the very unit called the family, that so much bothered me, that I believed primarily upheld human selfishness, that I believed even makes love selfish, and I'm sorry to say so again, that I believed even makes love impure.

The one question on this I want to ask God continues to be the same for years - "Did You create man so he can love everyone equally or did You create man so he can love the world in tiers?" Not having got the chance to meet God so far, and evidently not having found the answer to this question so far, I had no other option but to yield.

But what is all that the society trying to do with marriage?

Don't we want someone for ourselves?
Sure, but if there was no family and everybody was there for everyone else, why do we need someone for ourselves at all?
Don't we want to bequeath our own genes?
Exactly, that is the selfishness I'm talking about.
Won't human species go extinct otherwise?
If we really thought so, we should be saving the millions of children dying in Africa and Asia, before trying to create and save our own.
Don't you think a family is bringing some order in the chaos?
Yes, agreed, and I guess there stops all the reasons for marriage. I think any other reason to falsely sanctify marriage is ill-founded.

This is just my opinion. It can be as right or as wrong as yours is.

A wrong topic ends with a wrong conclusion because it had a wrong analysis, let me come back to this with a better analysis after finding out why marriage has survived for so long to create the order we so dearly need in our system.

The damn love and the goddamn marriage

I need a couple of hours to write this down ... let me see when I can do that.

The disremembered invisible reign

It was a while back when I had a discussion with a friend about whether humans are born bad and then imbibe good qualities or are born good and then acquire bad qualities. I’ve read articles that talk either way, so maybe it is not a clearly known fact. Today I got the time to reflect on it again.

If we’re supposed to learn moral ways of doing things from others, it means we were born bad and then try to grow good. But if you ever watched a kid grow, you would’ve been intrigued by the way the kid started to tell lies. It would've become obvious to you that nature’s adaptation process has touched the kid too. So, are we born bad and then we become good or are we born good and then we become bad?

One argument can be that if something comes naturally and easily to us, that’s probably our original self. Vices come naturally, but virtues have to be practised. If you’re someone who loses temper at the drop of a hat or someone who loses patience for every small botheration or someone who tries to procrastinate as much as possible or for that matter someone with any vice (I assume this includes all of us without exception), you’ll know what I’m talking about. But then you might not have had the vice to begin with, you would have acquired it as you grew. So, the question still remains unanswered.

Another argument can be related to chaos theory. One thing that I both admonish and admire about nature is its chaos. Though every single thing in nature tries to live in anarchy, there is a beautiful control that exists – the invisible reign of nature. As much as renowned philosophers might want to call this anarchy the free will of nature, self-proclaimed philosophers of the modern era (I think this again includes all of us) would want to call vices in people as free will too, especially in an attempt to support the existence of vices in themselves. But I think we willfully or ignorantly forget to correlate the invisible reign of nature to the invisible reign of conscience. Or maybe we tune our consciences on the fly, heavily biased for ephemeral gains, satisfaction and happiness.

Whatever may be the argument, most of the above accusals can be sanctified if we just take a moment to step back and perceive our own invisible reign of conscience. But where is the time to perceive conscience in an era where we don’t have time to even sleep well. I’m sorry, I think I asked for too much.