There are a number of things that I believe in and probably more things that I don’t. No, I won’t talk about religion [it would be an arduous task, cause g-d only knows when will that end] or the government [what I really don’t believe in, but again, a heavy statement], nor how our current society seems to manipulate people based on their gender and social class. I would rather talk about marriage.
When my 20-year-old cousin got pregnant by her boyfriend, it was a complete shock for my family – a very religious family on my mother’s side. We live in one compound, so news travels fast, especially to the ears of the elders. The moment they heard it, they barged inside the house and started berating her about a child out of wedlock. They didn’t start with the fact that she was still studying at that time, as with her boyfriend, or the fact that she has to support a new life without having some sort of income. They started ranting out on marriage, or the lack thereof. She stood defiantly, telling them that they can get through this without being “sucked into an institution.” True to her words, she and her boyfriend, 4 years later and still unmarried, are living a steady life with their two children.
Simply put, marriage is an ‘archaic institution’ that is still observed today. It is both a big concern for men and women before – princes need women so that they can rule over their fathers’ kingdoms, at the same time, women need men so that they can escape social injustice and scrutiny – and is still an issue now, where men need women to take care of themselves and women need men to assert that they are still living a normal life. Marriage, for the big part of the population, is not a huge crisis; it’s been that way for centuries. But what my cousin did stirred a lot of thinking in my part and it became apparent that there is this very heavy, whistling pressure that I need to get off my chest.
I grew up in your typical Filipino-Catholic family, so it probably means that I’m expected to be married by 24 or so and start having children a year after that. That’s just the way it goes. Our country hasn’t really caught up with the whole independent-woman-I’m-gonna-do-my-own-thing yet; our society is still stuck with the suburban-mommy scheme.
My non-belief has nothing to do with me being a Catholic: I believe in God, but not in marriage – it is a personal choice. No, I am not a ‘player’; I am into monogamy. I just hate that fact that this religious sacrament, either in ceremony or in paper, became a societal convention: if you get pregnant, or you got somebody pregnant, or you need someone to manage your life/finances for you, then you should get married. Now, it is all sex-and-fun-and-maybe-marriage-later. People forget the reasons as to why they need or want to get married in the first place. They only do it to placate the feelings of their parents or their own Catholic guilt: it became some sort of consequence, and not a matter of choice.
We cannot deny that marriage, the act of marrying someone, is indeed an institution, because it is considered and recognized socially and, more importantly, legally. But why do we bother building and holding onto that thought when people around us start disrespecting the whole idea of it? Even the word “marry” seems to have lost its essence: it is originally considered a “serious” word, but now you could just joke around it, or play with it passively in a little game called “Fork, Spoon and Knife.”
The biggest form of irreverence to it is divorce. Look at how couples bastardize this principle. You just need the consent of both partners (and, in most cases, money) to severe a union and declare “irreconcilable differences.” You can hear news of couples separating everywhere, most of them telling how expensive it is, and that is how “marriage counselling” or “couples therapy” carried out by “councillors” came about. I do not think they had these 200 years ago. Because we are living in a capitalistic world, people actually earn money by revelling on other people’s misery (schadenfreude). Some say divorce/annulment is a result of testing “the limits” of marriage, which parallels what happened when alcohol was banned; having constraints urges the human psyche to do what is forbidden more, like candies or chocolates mocking you behind a glass pane.
They say that fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, and the other fifty percent end in death. I don’t know what context that word ‘death’ belongs to or to what context ‘death’ is considered worse.
The play of the giant social triumvirate (race-class-gender) when it comes to marriage is also a big concern; one of them is same-sex marriage. Some people think it is an abomination to the natural order of things, and that we shouldn’t condone it. Others reflect on this in a religious point of view: that the Almighty created men to be with women. It is, of course, another big debate, but what the gay/lesbian community really wants is the legal recognition of their partnership, a marriage of minds and hearts that encompasses more than the physical/reproductive aspect of union.
It’s time for us to see that there is more to having a lasting partnership than the limits given by marriage. This is the 21st century; it is time for us to evolve into a society that accepts not only the archaic definitions of marriage, but also the new ones transpired by the ideas created as society and ideals change. People do not need a piece of paper to prove their commitment to another person, and hopefully, they would realize that in the near future.
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i’ve been pretty busy with school. dammit, 3 more weeks!! and a lot of exams/projects to do.
can you believe that we have an oral exam in math???
i have to read a 239-page book for a long test on friday. argh.
LOFD: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/03/080303fa_fact_holt. it’s about our capacity to learn Math and its development. see, i told you it’s all on practice!
