What is it that we really want?

Life is such a mystery.And to make it worse..we make it much more complicated and confusing.And then comes love...I have been thinking these past days..one of the most remarkable things about American/Western culture is that you have the freedom to marry for love, to forge lifelong bonds based not on class or race or religion or the number of cows your dad can spare, but on a feeling so beautiful that poets have spent lifetimes trying to lay it on a page, that artists have endeavored to capture in one still but enduring moment. Operas and books and films and pop songs, so heartbreakingly lovely that they can steal one's breath, if just for a moment, have been written by people in the thralls of love, or the searing pain of its loss. Monuments have been built, wars have been fought, and some of the greatest happiness ever experienced by humankind has been born because of love.

You are blessed with the luxury of love, and, make no mistake, it is a luxury. I come from a culture where believe-you-me..love is a luxury and the people around you make it a point for you to know that.
Marriage at its best has always been considered an expression of love. When it's simply an institution to facilitate the continued existence of a society through the birth of new generations, it is a splendid functional legal contract and nothing more. When it's a sign of commitment forged out of love, it is something ever so much grander. It is the stuff that legends are made of.

But, with the freedom to marry "for love" come additional burdens: extra anxiety about the future, the despair of loneliness, the pressure of finding that "right person", the fear of dying alone, the frustration of not loving someone who loves you or loving someone who doesn't, the dramatic highs and lows of turbulent relationships, the disappointment in giving up and "settling" for someone who's only good enough, and on and on.

The problem with marrying for love is that we pretend that love is just one thing, some kind of amazing fairytale passion that's supposed to persist forever and ever. In the movies, we always want the characters to drop everything, even ongoing stable relationships, and go after their heart's true love. I have even done this in real life and its been nice till now. But I feel what these movies typically don't show is what happens 5, 10, 15 years down the line. What happens when there is neither passion nor order??

But the eventual cure for meaninglessness is human companionship. I contend that we'd avoid so many problems and so much existential angst if we just had more structured social support systems, including marriages that were contractual arrangements geared toward certain ends and with negotiable terms.

I mean who says love and marriage must go together like a horse and carriage? Just look at the success of the horseless carriage or the "automobile".

Love
Richa