The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining ourselves to another we join ourselves to the unknown. We can join one another only by joining the unknown. We must not be misled by the procedures of experimental thought: in life, in the world, we are never given two known results to choose between, but only one result that we choose without knowing what it is.
Marriage rests upon the immutable givens that compose it: words, bodies, characters, histories, places. Some wishes cannot succeed; some victories cannot be won; some loneliness is incorrigible. But there is relief and freedom in knowing what is real; these givens come to us out of the perennial reality of the world, like the terrain we live on. One does not care for this ground to make it a different place, or to make it perfect, but to make it inhabitable and to make it better. To flee from its realities is only to arrive at them unprepared.
Because the condition of marriage is worldly and its meaning communal, no one party to it can be solely in charge. What you alone think it ought to be, it is not going to be. Where you alone think you want it to go, it is not going to go. It is going where the two of you - and marriage, time, life, history, and the world - will take it. You do not know the road; you have committed your life to a way.
The “unknown” seems so intimidating! But if we are giving our word to one another then we can face the unknown together. Marriage is an equal partnership. No one party can be solely in charge. No one party is solely to blame. Each takes responsibility. Marriage is not to be frivolously discarded at the first sign of disagreement or when you realize it is not what you thought it was should be. If you want something to last forever, such as marriage, you treat it differently. You shield it and protect it. You never abuse it. You don’t expose it to the elements. You don’t make it common or ordinary. If it ever becomes tarnished, you lovingly polish it. It becomes special because you have made it that way. -F. Burton Howard
ReplyDeletethat was amazing...seriously it "sang to me" as my accounting professor would say. You really never know what you are going to get and we have such unrealistic expectations for love and marriage.
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