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It's not nice to copy other people. The contents of my site are copyrighted by me....that means words, photos, image captions, EVERYTHING. Somehow you'll get caught if you copy, you know.
My wedding ring is just a plain gold band – somewhat wide, wider than my husband’s, but still just a plain gold band. In actual weight, of course it isn’t that heavy. But what it represents is heavy, if you take it seriously. Chefs talk about marrying flavors, which means the flavors complement each other but are a different thing in the combination. You can no longer identify this as entirely separate from that – the flavors are married. Bound together as long as the thing exists, in new form.
Anyone reading this who is married knows that marriage and married life is not just one thing. It is all things. There are greater joys because of the marriage, and more painful difficulties for the same reason. Joseph Campbell said, “Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair is a totally different thing. A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one. A love affair isn’t that. That is a relationship of pleasure, and when it gets to be unpleasurable, it’s off. But a marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you are not married.” The luckiest people have marriages that maintain the flavor of a love affair, I guess.
In our culture, we tend not to take marriage this seriously; we tend, instead, to get all wound up with trying to keep marriage for only some people, and not for others. I have never understood that, but this is a topic for a different post, or perhaps a different blog. We also tend to encourage others to just leave if their needs aren’t being met. “You should just leave, you deserve better than this.” Of course I am not talking about abusive marriages.
My marriage is the prime concern of my life, and my husband and I both give it that place in our lives. There are truly joyous times, fun times, times we each feel like we’re the lucky one, times we each feel like the other person is the lucky one, times our commitment to each other is the thing that binds us when we can’t feel the rest. It’s a very heavy thing, to take a marriage seriously, to truly marry another person, especially in our culture.
I am not a religious person, but I was raised with religion and I have more than a passing familiarity with the bible. Both Matthew and Luke deliver the same message – it is no credit to love those who love you, you must love those who don’t. I take the form of that argument here: marriage is not exerting itself when things are light and fun, better and in health; marriage exerts itself when things are worse, or sick, for all the days of a life. That’s pretty heavy stuff.
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it's nice to share! mom was right!
Lovely post.
On her own blog, yarnpiggy just said ..Awwww, shucks!
thank you so much.
I love your post! I have to admit that I had the same immediate take when I read the prompt today.
isn’t that funny? it was all i could think of, so obvious, but very few people seemed to have this response. thanks for commenting.
GREAT shot!
thank you! i ran out of time and just called him over from the kitchen, plunked his hand down and snapped it. it’s hard to get these in during the week!
Yup. You’ve hit the nail on the head. I’ve been lucky in many ways — I married my best friend, and he’s still my best friend. But luck isn’t all of it, there’s hard work in there, too, and it’s all worth it.
On her own blog, Jocelyn just said ..You can’t buy that at Walmart, baby
it sure is worth it – how lucky to have found your best friend! being good friends helps a lot, doesn’t it. i think it makes the fun parts even more fun.
I selected your pic as I liked it the best and wondered why bands of gold didn’t come to mind for me when I saw it, I do have faith in God so your reference to the Bible was really useful for me as the message in those gospels is something I hadn’t actually given much thought to. Thankyou.
I’m glad my post was meaningful to you! Writing it made me feel closer to my husband.
Wedding rings (and the exchange of them) were on my short list too so I can understand the concept of your photo and identify with what you say.
On her own blog, Louise just said ..Day 4 Creativity Boot Camp – "Heavy Metal"
thanks, Louise – I very much enjoyed your take on heavy metal! it was a more interesting prompt than i’d imagined.
Awesome baking/cooking metaphor. I love that Campbell quote, thanks for sharing.
Joseph Campbell is almost always good – or Mary Oliver. Such brilliant minds.