Marriage Vows, the End of an Era

I am being surrounded with people who are getting married. And yes, they are all around my age. Despite my increasing workload in school and responsibilities, I suppose I took some time out to muse about our present day's marriage vows. I wrote something on msn that kind of reflected the process of my thoughts.

"The matter of choice merely destroyed the vow of unbreakable marriage.The trait of learning to love what you hate simply disappeared when you are allowed to find someone else who doesn't want you to change. That's why eternal love ceased to exist.We became lazy at love. Remember, there was far more sacrifice on both parties back in the days of arranged marriages. And through sacrifice, couples earned each other's love, instead of depending on the unstable chemistry that we go through to find a partner in the present day."

Whether you believe that or not, I will lose no sleep. For I have decided to give up on this generation of lazy lovers. Love doesn't just happen to fall into a couple's lap and then they get married. That's usually lust on the male's side coupled with infatuations on the female side. And it can get exceptionally twisted when the females expect to be treated like princesses simply because they were born with better genes. That's simply not love. That's just our hormones speaking. Love is when you are willing to sacrifice the most important thing in your life for a person who doesn't deserve it. That is Love to me. Love is unconditional, Love is blind. If you find that your "Loving" someone just because he or she looks attractive, chances are that's just lust.

It's not that lust cannot develop into love. I personally know of some loving couples (Some of my uncles and aunties as well as some aqquaintances) that actually started out merely having the basest of animal attractions to one another. But these couples are actually quite the minority compared to the others who end up leaving one another simply because the "spark" dissipated. Can a marriage last on lust? Obviously not, that's why our current system of letting our hormones decide on our life partner is failing miserably compared with the system of arranged marriages.

In an arranged marriage, we often associate the sob stories we see in dramas. But I do believe that they were more successful in cultivating love simply because the couple had very little say in the matter. So all they sought to do, was to learn to love each other since it was in their own best interests. Such love is seldom recorded or even examplified by the popular media simply because it must have been COMMON PLACE back in the past. I am sure the media always try to play up the "rarities" in society so that people sit up and take notice. They wouldn't want to show people what happens in their everyday mundane lives with predictable endings. They want to spice it up with "what if the arranged marriage had a couple that didn't end up loving each other for life?"

I have deep respect for these ancient traditions not only because it is just starting to make sense to the people of today, but it is the fruit of labors of our ancient scientific forefathers. The methods of matchmaking was an extremely complex and effective method of weeding out or minimizing genetic dieases and traits by avoiding matching couples with similar known dieases and traits. Thus in doing so, they avoid passing down these traits that require both the father and mother to be carriers of the genetic trait to infect their children. Such genetic knowledge was kept alive by the very act of matchmaking. But sadly it is quickly becoming a lost art today. Five THOUSAND years of genetic expertise and knowledge will be lost in this 2-3 generations. It will probably end in my generation, leaving me with the sad duty of mourning the loss of countless generations of knowledge that has once benefitted the human race.

Proof that our whimsy has triumphed over knowledge and sacrifice of our forebears to maintain this knowledge, all wasted because we are too lazy to learn how to love. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才