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Sunday, April 20, 2008

Life! Sweet and Sour



The objective of the promotion of Harmony and Understanding between Men and Women is the enjoyment of those relationships that work. If you have never felt complete abandon to another person, then I am very sorry for you. But, don’t despair, that realization can happen at any time, usually when you least expect it. The only requirement is that you be open to the possibilities.

You have heard it said, “Oh! The things we do for love!” It is the only time in our lives when we can act as total fools and not regret one minute.(Until later?) We smooch and snog in public; we hold hands; we laugh, we love; we cry, and all’s right with the world. Ain’t love Grand!

That stage doesn’t last, of course. It does lead us to think that the natural thing to do is to spend the rest of our lives with this amazing person who has the ability to make us feel so high on life. Once we have made our union legal we go on to further complicate the situation with a mortgage and children. Suddenly, we no longer have time for each other and quality time together. All of those other things get in the way, and differences of opinion set us against each other. These are trying times, and the challenge is to survive the passage.

I was talking recently to a couple who were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, which proves that it is still possible to hang in there. Many couples these days end up fighting for custody of the wedding cake, so lightly do they enter into marriage.

In reality, many artists of our time have a philosophy of avoiding the marriage contract altogether, and to avoid co-habiting. Their idea is to live together apart. That means that each partner maintains their own home, and pursues their own career without either person having to give up anything for the other person’s benefit. They believe that if their relationship is solidly based the partners will not take advantage of the opportunities to mate with other people, just because they can.

Each person has to work at maintaining the union, and the union will only succeed if the appropriate level of commitment and trust is really there.

As for the children, they spend time between the parent’s homes as agreed. The likelihood of ill will creeping into such an arrangement is probably quite low. Of course, this is all quite experimental, and time will tell.

The message from the couple that celebrated fifty years is that those fifty years were anything but blissful. They both admitted many times wishing or thinking about walking away. Times were very hard, and stress was the order of the day. There were times when they felt real hatred for one another, but they stayed the course. They had embarked upon a mission to bring up the children that they felt so compelled to bring into this world and to pay off their mortgage.

Before they knew it, the children were gone and the nest was empty. They only had each other. They could have chosen at that time to move on, both having served their time for their crimes of the heart. They chose not to do so because they had invested so much of themselves in each other.

The love that first brought them together, long ago vanished, and now that they were re-discovering each other something new was taking the place of all that lust and passion of 50 years ago. They were discovering respect, admiration, and pride in one another’s achievements. These are lasting feelings that endure for the rest of time.

Fortunately, memory is a wonderful thing. There is that screen that sets aside the hard knocks and disappointments of life in favour of the sweet things that we have experienced and are worth remembering. Were that not so, most women would give birth to only one child because of birthing pain. (So I’m told.)

For our couple looking back over the last 50 plus years, the question becomes “Now What?” These two people are both retired, and they go absolutely everywhere together. One starts a sentence and the other could finish it. They are now in that stage that young lovers talk about when they say “I want to grow old with you.”

I knew another couple like these folks. Inevitably one died, (the husband) and within two weeks his wife, who apparently was perfectly healthy, simply passed away in her sleep. As sad as that was for their children, (and all who knew them) I have always regarded that as the height of romance. The words “I can’t live without you” had real meaning.

Copyright © 2008 Eugene Carmichael