Myth

I feel like men are more romantic than women.  When we get married we marry one girl. Cause we’re resistent the whole way, until we meet one girl and we think: “I’d be an idiot if I didn’t marry this girl she’s so great.” But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option or something. I know girls that married they’re like: “Oh he’s got a good job.” I mean, they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who’s got a good job and is gonna stick around.

When we were little, we were told all these fairy tales of how a beautiful, kind and pure girl would fall in love with a handsome, rich prince charming who owns a castle and they will live happily ever after in a faraway land. But not only do happily ever afters don't exist, so is the kind of story they keep telling us as bedtime stories.

In real life, there is only very few people would fall in love with someone's voice the way Phillip fell for Aurora. No one is going to have the kind of love at first sight Marius had with Cosette. And there are so many other beautiful ways about falling in love that movies and fairy tales tried to make us believe, but they're ridiculously impractical to the point of them almost being completely impossible.

Very recently, I had an epiphany. Maybe there's no love. Maybe people get married out of the commitment to build a life, a traditions our ancestors did to sustain human life, and that alone is the reason why there's marriage in this world. Maybe people don't fall in love; they fall in logic or whatever it is that drives them toward someone. Some people like money, fancy cars, bright future, career, social status, or someone's lifestyle... And maybe they are the things that make marriages more sustainable. Because only very few people fall in love with the right person. But the definition of right will always change to suit someone's perception of life. So I guess it's something other than love that takes people to get married.

My view in marriage is somewhat very... modern, I suppose? That's what Before Midnight say anyway. I believe that every couples have an expiration, because love does. Only very, very few people found someone that they can fall in love with every day for the rest of their lives. And those who didn't, well... They live out of commitments. Marriage is a vow people say in the name of God and in front of God, and therefore it is a very sacred institution that should never be broken with words such as, "I fall out of love with him."

By that definition, I think that maybe we marry someone who has the same vision with us; the same commitment, i.e. someone whose actions and missions are tolerable and in harmony with ours, and whom we will never run out of patience with. I grew up with the belief that love isn't the holy grail of relationships; it's commitment. Someone said to me a few years ago something the 18-year-old me had never thought of: "Commitment is a very big thing, you know? You graduate school, you take a decent job, you marry someone you like, and that's what you're gonna end up with forever. A job that you must do every day; the same person you're gonna wake up to every morning for the rest of your life; the same house you're gonna go home to every day; children you have to feed and educate and has the needs you have to fulfill... It's a grand job, you know? And you have to do it every single day of your life. You have no other choice. That is a commitment. You think commitment is easy?"

I know, it's such a morose essay and my last post before this one is an optimistic quote to remind us all that sometimes, life does imitate Disney movies. And while it is your life to live it any way you want to, with the kind of buoyancy my last post gave you, or the grimy truth I just told you, I want you to always keep in mind that after all... It's your life. No one has the same story. Just because you have a good life doesn't mean someone else does, and vice versa. So maybe the best that we can do is still to believe that if we are good, we deserve good things too. And if they're not here yet, maybe the package just come in late.