“Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
In the middle of what felt like the fiftieth argument I was having with my husband that morning, I found myself searching for a version of us I can’t seem to find anywhere anymore.
Where were those young people, the ones who gamely ran into anything, did anything, the ones who were happy so easily? They approached life with so much joy. How have they become a pair who bicker over the tiniest of differences and the smallest of issues? How can a conversation about forgetting to buy bread or not knowing what’s next evolve into one on our deepest disappointments? If our arguments were to have a tagline it would probably be - Zero to 100 in a single breath, faster than any supercar on the planet.
The questions didn’t go away as the day progressed. They evolved into something else - How do you retain love in a marriage? Is love marriage an oxymoron? For it's almost as though the act of getting married itself expels the love. And is that because we simply aren't designed to share closet space and crying space and breathing space with another person for an extended period of time and still retain the magic?
Marriage is a bit like going underneath the magicians cloak, like taking a trip backstage, seeing what lies behind the curtain with all the wires exposed, and panic running amok. You see the hidden flaps and all the hidey-holes and learn the secrets behind the tricks. So the wonder and joy evaporate.
Oh that sense of humour you fell for? It comes from a place of self-deprecation. The ability to get things done no matter what? That’s impossible without a perfectionist slant that slowly eats away at the soul. That lovely way in which they care for everyone around them? Yeah, that’s because they have trouble practising compassion for themselves.
There’s nothing quite like a deeper understanding of the person we love, to question the love.
In The Course of Love, a book I cannot possibly recommend enough, Alain de Botton explores the idea of love and the functioning of a marriage, and rather astutely states:
“There is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.”
If there ever was a reason to choose wisely, and to reconsider the entire construct itself this would be it.
But then just as easily as the argument arises, it dissipates too. Our hands interlock, and everything seems as it always was. The anger and frustration don’t disappear, after all love isn’t a magic trick, but their force and impact ebb. They meld into the background like back-up dancers when the protagonist enters. They co-exist, because you simply cannot have love without accepting frustration too.
Growing up, I would always worry when my parents argued. Now I see, it’s inevitable. So perhaps marriage, and specifically the love in it, is more like misplacing your spectacles, searching for them all over the house - underneath the newspapers, and beneath the sofa - only to discover that they’ve been on your head the entire time.
You keep searching for common ground, for the other to understand you, for companionship and love, and somewhere after forty frustrated nights you find it’s been there all along, just not in the place you’ve been looking; not in the shape you recognise.
Date nights and romance evolve into holding your hand in a hospital’s waiting room. Acts of love morph into having a thousand conversations over and over again on your inability to cope with your fears. And at the end of a long and exhausting day, is there anything more romantic than someone else loading the dishwasher and winding down the kitchen? I think not. (Feminism > Flowers)
And for all of his warnings, with his ability to uncover the deepest parts of our soul, and write about the innateness of being human, Alain de Botton agrees. Perhaps what we need to remember when we embark on a long journey with a partner, instead of our lofty expectations of a perfect life is this -
“In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the altar, a couple would speak thus: "We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
Some scattered thoughts from this week:
Our generation is so susceptible to being unsure - a predicament that perhaps our parents never faced - and that is both an asset and a liability. With the power of choice and not being fixed comes the wonder of being able to change your life, change your mind and that is truly liberating. But too much change, too much choice can also wreak havoc. For it can leave us perpetually questioning what it is we truly want.
Inspired by conversations with a friend on cooking, and especially on how food changes from home to home, and hand to hand, I found myself wanting to cook something different. Archana Pidathala’s Five Morsels of Love has been calling out to me from the bookshelf, so I embarked on cooking her Chicken Stewed in Coconut Milk. Except halfway through the process the gravy in the kadhai looked mockingly yellow. Pale like the colour of rasmalai instead of the rich brown in the photograph staring back at me from the open cookbook. I despaired over the shade and yet that despair was all in vain. For fifteen mins of simmering saw it undergo a transformation. It turned to mustard yellow - the colour of haldi - and then eventually a light brown. And while the final brown wasn't as rich and dark as Archana or her ammama’s it was still a brown. And that’s the beauty of giving things time. They get there, with enough time.
Cooking is so much about patience. And perhaps that is why I find it so meditative. And I don't want to say that cooking this one recipe is a Julie and Julia project but Julie Powell has been on my mind these past couple of weeks ever since she unexpectedly passed away. And while I am certain I could never cook anything from her book, anything Julia Child ever did, I find that reading Julie’s story, reading about her determination and her stubbornness, and the honesty that comes through in her writing, has helped me - in the kitchen and outside of it; to grow as a person, and as a writer. So thank you, Julie. Thank you for your words, and for sharing your life with us.
I sometimes think that we’re all that kid, the one who runs into an elevator and presses all of the fifteen buttons available - infuriating everyone else but also making them laugh. Except as adults, all the buttons we’ve pressed are labelled HELP! When the doors open, who we let in, and what help we actually accept is entirely up to us.
So true and real I find myself giggling away at my own life as well. Love that I'm getting to know the both of you through these snippets. Glad to have you in my life 💖
Fabulous. No other words to express