Love as Threatened by Change and Time

I had the opportunity recently to observe two elderly people who remained married, supposedly loyal to each other, for over sixty years. I noticed the attachment as well as the inconvenient demands which they placed on each other, even in the elderly condition after years of observing each other and knowing the character traits which were disliked but were recurrent, as well as the desirable traits which too were recurrent but much desired.

One of the partners, the woman, showed me an old photo album which has photos of their wedding day. These were in grey scale, cracked and faded a bit, but showed the emotions of the bridge and groom, their comparative youthful forms, their hopes and aspirations, the bright light of young adult hood and the promise of a license for the privacy of sexual intercourse.

This couple had learnt to live with each other, where their disagreements were played down by the male even when the female stressed these. Instead of nagging about faults of the male, the female would make curt remarks in a teasing fashion with a smile on her face, a sort of dry sarcastic but not-so-cutting humor.

Someone told me that the female took seriously her wedding vows from so many years ago, about until-death-do-we-part. I marveled at her audacity. I remember attending weddings during adolescent years, where I was always puzzled at the spectacle, the money spent, the expected attire, the church ceremony, the party and honeymoon after.

Even now I still regard the whole incidence of formal marriage to be one of the biggest mysteries of social behavior. Practically every culture on earth has some marriage procedure even though all are not monogamous. In most cases when stripped down, marriage is a license for using sexual organs as to which person can indulge with which other person as approved by relatives and the community.

But love for all it is, all it was in the past and all it will be in the future, has time and change as enemies. Since time and change are abstract, a frustrated partner can only take the frustration out on the other partner. The real culprits which are time and change are not evident to anybody.

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Until death do we part?

Really?

With whose permission?

Under whose security?

Not to speak about the hereafter, no matter what that is or is supposed to be!