The Knot

I wish I could say that the trip was exactly the restful holiday I needed to cushion my melodramatic emotions of turning 25 but from the moment I touched down, I quickly realised it wasn't about that. To be honest, the quarter life crisis didn't happened..instead I was taken by other events that were unfolding right before my eyes. Perhaps I will expand on my trip but it is a thankless task to do so for now I will just record my observations of a particular nature.

It's odd. It is not a secret I have been somewhat scornful of this Malaysian notion that we all have to get married at a certain point in life and that it is society's obligation to apply pressure to those who fall in that category. It's not that I am marriage-shy, au contraire I put too much value in it. Perhaps of being a product of a failed one that there is a certain sense of "let me show you how it is suppose to be done". There is a finality in marriage that both excites and terrifies me in equal measures. However this time around I am somewhat persuaded to see the alternative view that marriage is another corrupt institution we can bend according to our whims and wants.

I can pick several instances that encourages me to support this new alternative view yet for the sake of discretion let me just expound the conclusions rather than relate the details. One instance absolutely disgusted me, I felt compelled to ride my high horse and was within striking distances in conducting a sermon about the sanctity of marriage. But preaching never interests me and social decorum dictated I should not do so and I bowed to it. I always felt that if you had taken that plunge, you should bend over backwards to ensure that it works... and if there were children involved your happiness should take a backseat to theirs. Obviously this should not apply to abusive marriages but is it justified at any given time for us to throw in the towel just as easily as we would do if we had not taken those vows?

But just as easily another incident rocks my beliefs and from the heights I rode, I now lay humbly on the ground awaiting justification. I now wonder if I was put in the same situation, whether I would be able to stand firm under the glare of loyalty or would I again fall victim to the same arguments as those before me? Does justification excuse betrayal? Also in the case where love and marriage are mutually exclusive, which should reign supreme? Can it be that in our own personal journey for the One, this search is only a pretense? That the peak or end result is not the marriage and the happily ever after but that marriage is just another qualification we have to attain like a degree and that it is not a reward but a burden? Another qualification with different merits for the convenience of society to decide which social strata you belong in?

I have always felt that marriage should be held in the highest esteem and that it's participation in this exclusive club would come at a heavy price but with great rewards. Yet all these incidents which quite simply rocked (pun intended absolutely) my world, have managed to debased my perception. Is it enough to throw my naive notions completely? I have no idea but romanticism has taken quite a beating. The surprising thing is, if marriage isn't all that I thought it was and that this sorry substitution is all we look forward to... then I no longer fear it. After all if it is just a qualification, then I shall be right at home. In that case, you just try and try again until you make the grade.