CHAPTER 10
Why The Young Men And Women Are Reluctant To Get
Married And Fear of Not Getting Mr. or Ms. Right…
The questions of life and living have a mystically magical date with milieus. Milieus, themselves are not independent realism as this intangibility of collective perceptions often create this tangibility of milieus…!
The question, which is well there in the cultural milieu and has a rather mystical aura to it, is – “Why the young Men and Women are reluctant to get Married…?”
Somehow, the right or logically appropriate answer is still evolving as the question itself is just in its inception. Still, the talk is everywhere that young ones are not very inclined to marriage, especially young women, who are empowered and independent!
Before we attempt to answer this evolving question, let us first spare some precious time for a passage below, which shall probably help in delving into the perspectives of the question. No question of life is isolated from other questions. That is why, a holistic perspective about life-living and milieus may be rightfully appropriate here to understand the nature and scope of the question at hand – “Why the young men and women are reluctant to get married…?”
Do kindly let the passage below sink in… what sinks in, stays…
“The dawn was still processing its registry… the birds had though geared up for the day… flowers stirring and looking eastward set to welcome their beloved Sun… A boy was awake too, marshalling his goats. He could clearly hear him singing in his pastoral best shrieking tone…
“He sat by the window of his house watching and enjoying the blank sky. The grey sky would gradually turn crimson and finally golden. The darkness of the sky was what he was enjoying. He had a feeling it would look wonderful as and when dawn would herald its inevitable arrival...
“He reminisced and smiled. How many times in his life, he found and cherished loads of purposes. He smiled because he realized how important stupidities of life are... how they extend you the chance to be wise. How people miss the relevance of stupidities as catalyst of wisdom.
“He recalled the efforts and pain he had to invest in the preparedness for attaining his purposes at different stages of his life. And look at the brilliance of the conspiracy of almighty; whenever he prepared hard and meticulously for a purpose he wanted to attain, he would invariably fail. He would feel bad, low and frustrated about the wastage of his investments. Most of his successes came when he had done the least preparation and was not even sure of the purpose...
“He had finally accepted; preparation and purpose had a strange relationship. He wished to come to terms with the realization that preparation for a purpose is a misnomer. The preparedness is required for something, which is uncertain. His father would often tell him – ‘Hope for the best and be prepared for the worst’. He realized it that what is certain and a definite purpose is what falls in the realm of hope. Preparedness is required for what is uncertain and does not form a purpose. If preparedness and purpose were linear realities, there would have been far more success stories on earth. Success remains as handful exceptions… success has traditionally been referred to as object of desire, hope and dreams. The real world faces the trouble that failures are the rule and most people are least prepared for it….
“He realized; one needs to be in the state of ‘readiness’, not for a specific purpose but as life in general. One needs not to ‘prepare’ but to be ‘ready’. Readiness itself is the larger purpose for all preparedness. Preparedness is only a process whereas readiness is the end product; the final destination. The readiness is required not only for failures but also for successes. Handling success is more tedious task than handling failures. Success requires larger readiness.
“He smiled as he realized he had attained readiness. When you attain, you go blank. The zero is the highest point of readiness. He thanked the almighty for bestowing upon him a series of crises and loads of stupidities … this journey to zero was necessary. He however prayed that the wisdom of zero remained with him. He wished to continue with his ‘readiness’ and not be part of any ‘preparedness’ in future.
“He had realized his stupidity. The road ahead was clear to him. He had gone past the fear factor in his life. And, the readiness, the ultimate and exalted beingness was just beyond the confines of the fear factor. He remembered, how since childhood, he struggled to conquer a series of fears he thought he was born with. He grew up demolishing them but only to realize that he had added more fears than he overpowered.
“The existential fears were replaced by fears that society offloaded on him. He grew up accepting so many benchmarks of successes and goodness that his family, his peer group, his seniors, icons and leaders lined up for him to follow. He grew up preparing hard to win all the benchmarks and in time got more apprehensive of failures and loses.
“Even successes that came when he expected them the least, made him bury deeper in the abyss of fear. Each success only stretched the benchmarks and prolonged the process of preparedness. The fear never went away; rather it grew up engulfing his beingness totally. He could not understand the elusiveness of the state of readiness; a stage after reaching where he could say he had finally arrived. He could not understand the hydra-headedness of the fear; that no doubt egged him to higher stage of preparedness but never allowed him the basic urge of a lasting satisfaction. He had even started believing that life is a never-ending ‘preparedness-struggle’ for the elusive satisfaction of ‘readiness’…
“The state of zero, the state of quintessential readiness, the state of unattached consciousness made him realize for the first time what wins all fears. It taught him to rise above the process of preparedness to the ultimate stage of readiness. He truly understood why he felt fearless. When it happens; all good and cherished ideals of humanity fall in your lap, they fill your being. It embodies all goodness – honesty, innocence, transparency, selflessness and egolessness and above all the compassion.
“It does the magic…. It makes the willful merger of individualism into the collectivity; the individuality of ‘I’ dissolving into the collectivity of ‘us’. It fills the heart and mind with compassion and when compassion plays the music in the heart, all cherished ideals and goodness of humanity get drawn into the mind. The fear goes away the next moment as this happens. He thanked the almighty for making him understand the fear factor and its dynamics.
“Readiness leads you to the door…. the entry point of zero but then, you have to step ahead to be into the zero. Every human being is blessed by the almighty to attain this readiness as all human beings are given at least one chance to experience it.
“To the blessed ones is revealed the music of compassion….
“… It leads one to the ultimate empowerment of self – the ability to forgive. When forgiveness becomes the first instinct, it is a sure sign that the stage of readiness has been attained. The forgiveness is attaining the blank, the zero, the ultimate empowerment, the readiness. You accept nothing - no pride, no self, no ego, no ‘I’ and you give everything as you forgive....”
Now, we come back to our question at hand. This metaphor about two key terms of life-living, in response to the milieus we all live in – Preparedness and Readiness may be applied to marriages and their overall supposition of being a difficult terrain. It may help…
Ideally, falling in love is somehow option-less as it is instinctive. We are definitively wired to be in perpetuity of love. That is why falling in love needs no readiness. It is beyond choice and conscious decision and that is why, almost everyone is in love or wishes to be in love. Being in love is akin to being in the stage of ‘preparedness’.
However, opting to get marriage is not visceral. It is always a conscious choice, unlike love. We all feel and accept that love happens, it is not done or made to happen. Marriage however, does not happen; it has to be made to happen. Definitively, marriage is the stage of ‘readiness’.
This preparedness and readiness dualism itself is the cause of our question – this disinclination towards marriage. We all are very well aware that even this instinctive love is so much infested with precarious emotions, unsettled behavior-action and often some inexplicable pains. This surely stands as a big factor to feel a strange ‘fear’ for the inevitability called marriage.
It is rather interesting that most young men and women seldom admit that they are averse to marriage. However, what they do is – ‘Procrastination Politics’. They all are finding enough implicit or explicit causes to procrastinate marriage decision.
This procrastination attitude itself points out to the fact that there is a lurking ‘fear-factor’ (about definitive ‘success’ of an ‘enterprise’), not only about love and marriages but also about many key decisions of life. This procrastination is the precarious personality positioning of a mind consciousness, which somehow stands trapped in ‘mismanagement of fears’. The young ones can handle ‘fear’ but they are procrastinating as this head-on desire to ‘manage fear’ is missing. We all know and accept that ‘dar ke aage jeet hai’(there is victory beyond fear), but the procrastination to step beyond it takes control.
If we begin to list cause for this procrastination attitude, there can be a list, which may be endless. However, the core causality is what the above metaphor about ‘preparedness’ and ‘readiness’ lists as.
I humbly repeat what has been said above – The ultimate empowerment of self, the definitive ‘readiness’ in life is – The Ability To Forgive. No doubt, not only love and marriages, but in all our relationships, we and others can commit mistakes. We are all humans and we do err. However, we all need to arrive at the stage of ‘Readiness’ – This compassionate consciousness, which is empowered with the ability to forgive. Attitude towards success needs more compassion than attitude towards failures.
When forgiveness becomes the first instinct, it is a sure sign that the stage of readiness has been attained. The forgiveness is attaining the blank, the zero, the ultimate empowerment, the readiness. You accept nothing - no pride, no self, no ego, no ‘I’ and you give everything as you forgive....
As this happens, love is divine and marriage becomes this abode of resplendent readiness. As this happens, we all shall begin to accept that neither love, nor marriage, nor any relationship is the cause of trouble. The primary and core trouble is our own lack of ‘readiness’. We all need to arrive at the stage of ‘Readiness’ – This Compassionate Consciousness…
Moreover, to be more on the side of day-to-day pragmatism of the realism, we need to see and accept that desirability is not a readymade availability. Both – Desirability and Availability, do not seem to have a readymade Compatibility. Choices themselves are varied and what fits in to an individual may not be exactly what life serves or availability has the inventory for. This seems true for most things in life. Still, nothing seems impossible, though difficult it may seem, as human skills and faculties should never say ‘no’, even if a yes is always tough to come by...!
This is a common conundrum. You go shopping and it would be tough to buy even a shirt, which is precisely to what you have in mind and what you have imagined should be your best choice. Think of looking for a ‘life-partner’ and you shall surely admit, what has been said above – Desirability and Availability, do not seem to have a readymade Compatibility...!
Often, the man a woman seeks or the vice-versa, seems to have evaporated from earth. Thankfully, if a woman gets her right man, it seems, this man is already in love with other or does not seem anyway interested. Or, worst, even when this right man becomes ‘available’, it seems, he is good but not the ‘right package’ for marriage or a lasting relationship...!
People are already talking of two major global trends for humanity (do kindly accept some humor) –
No doubt, it is very crucial for both men and women to find the ‘right package’ in his or her partner. Life is already too tough, how can one afford to have ‘not so smooth’ marital life. This fear is already making both men and women, especially women feel scared of marriage...!
Somehow, it is a very humble assertion that life has never been easy or complicated. It has been what it is. However, we, as individuals as well as collectively make our lives easy or complicated. It needs to be accepted that marriage, let alone ‘good marriage’ has never been easy in USA, India or anywhere. However, for both marriage and good marriage, this is probably the best time...!
Somehow, it is a revisiting feeling in all of us as, how good it could be if we all could know, where is my ‘Mr. Right’ or ‘Ms. Right’. The simple trouble is – There always is not only one or two ‘Mr. Rights’ or ‘Ms. Rights’ but so many of them. If we cannot hit it ‘right’ then there must be something not so ‘right’ with the way we look for them...!
Let us admit it with heart-felt simplicity and innocent sincerity that people are different and their choices shall always be different. What we need, the availability is always there, though not in over-supply but sufficient! After all one needs only one person for marriage...!
The simple solution is two way –
As this you have done. You have to be ready for the last Big Thing – That is to acquire this fruitfully right ‘Communication’ to tell others as what you truly want.
Being young is so very beautifully marvelous endowment. Being young means, you are always open to learning and evolving fast and sure. So, meet your man or woman and be what you as a young person are best at – Communication of Sincerity...!
Ask your man or woman, ‘I am open to adjustments for compatibilities as married life would seek from both of us. Still, there are a few things, I need to see and find in my life-partner. We need to sit and talk over them. I accept that idealism is not readymade but there has to be some basic ingredients in a man and woman to hit the road to evolving together towards this idealism. Let us spare our best of time and space and invest on each other so that we could be assured of this ‘primary-chemistry’. If yes, we are there; if not, we shall happily wish each other the best in life as marriage must always be the union of two people, who can evolve together and hit the road to joys and prosperity together.’
The words are not important. Everyone can have his or her own choice of words but the sincerity of intent and artistry of open and compassionate communication is a must. Everyone must have this artistry of sincerely innocent communication to ensure that his or her desirability gets the best availability, for which he or she has the right compatibility.
Somehow, it is a humble but sad acceptance that in contemporary times, young men and women are not communicating well or, they are also not very sure as what is their own set of chosen compatibility. Recent surveys have suggested that most young men and women are marrying even when they are not sure –
Naturally, confused desirability, with inefficient communication lands young men and women in precarious availability. And as marriages are hitting precarious availability, the worst hit is the compatibility. Love’s labor lost is what sets it. Let this not happen...
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