The bride wore white, as a symbol of her virginity.
Her two daughters, by different men made wonderful bridesmaids, while her son, whose father was a different man again looked so cute in his page boy outfit.
The groom's children sat with their grandfather, who watched stony faced as the female celebrant bound his son to his second wife, for as long as it may last I guess, in a wedding venue decorated in the height of modern wedding kitsch.
I wasn't there, thank God, but some close to me were.
Here's the thing my friends getting married is (was?) a rite of passage. It did once mean that the participants were now ready to undertake the adult responsibilities of raising a family. Conception outside marriage was frowned upon - with good reason. Marriage was protective of both women and children. And it was good for men too - it gave them a reason to grow up and a purpose in life beyond satisfying their own immediate desires.
We live in a world where its meaning has been degraded down to meaninglessness, where two men or two women can essentially undergo the same or similar rituals in an exercise of sheer pointlessness.
It was once an undertaking of seriousness and marked with ceremony and decorum, though joyful, in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion.
Now it lasts just as long as one or other of the participants doesn't get bored and walk away.
And the consequences are dire - people who never grow up, hundreds of thousands of fatherless children, an epidemic of child abuse along with ever increasing numbers of prescriptions written out for anti-depressants.
To be sure this social upheaval has benefited some, well some perhaps, Jacinda Ardern, an immature 31 year old woman no doubt feels satisfied with her number four position on the Labour front bench - but she is a big nothing, an empty vessel, a woman-child.
Anyway for every "successful" upper middle class woman there are hundreds of lonely poor women struggling with sole parenthood. And there are also hundreds of lost and confused men whose role has been reduced to being "sperm donors" and checkbooks.
But they are the price that has to be price paid for the upper middle class to indulge in its whimsys I guess.
What's new the poor have always paid the cost for the sins of the rich.
Her two daughters, by different men made wonderful bridesmaids, while her son, whose father was a different man again looked so cute in his page boy outfit.
The groom's children sat with their grandfather, who watched stony faced as the female celebrant bound his son to his second wife, for as long as it may last I guess, in a wedding venue decorated in the height of modern wedding kitsch.
I wasn't there, thank God, but some close to me were.
Here's the thing my friends getting married is (was?) a rite of passage. It did once mean that the participants were now ready to undertake the adult responsibilities of raising a family. Conception outside marriage was frowned upon - with good reason. Marriage was protective of both women and children. And it was good for men too - it gave them a reason to grow up and a purpose in life beyond satisfying their own immediate desires.
We live in a world where its meaning has been degraded down to meaninglessness, where two men or two women can essentially undergo the same or similar rituals in an exercise of sheer pointlessness.
It was once an undertaking of seriousness and marked with ceremony and decorum, though joyful, in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion.
Now it lasts just as long as one or other of the participants doesn't get bored and walk away.
And the consequences are dire - people who never grow up, hundreds of thousands of fatherless children, an epidemic of child abuse along with ever increasing numbers of prescriptions written out for anti-depressants.
To be sure this social upheaval has benefited some, well some perhaps, Jacinda Ardern, an immature 31 year old woman no doubt feels satisfied with her number four position on the Labour front bench - but she is a big nothing, an empty vessel, a woman-child.
Anyway for every "successful" upper middle class woman there are hundreds of lonely poor women struggling with sole parenthood. And there are also hundreds of lost and confused men whose role has been reduced to being "sperm donors" and checkbooks.
But they are the price that has to be price paid for the upper middle class to indulge in its whimsys I guess.
What's new the poor have always paid the cost for the sins of the rich.
Well said!
ReplyDeleteIf you mean love between to people of the opposite sex is meaningless on comparison to the fake weddings we see every day then you have a few more problems than that.
ReplyDeleteI have been to a lot of weddings lately, and what struck me was of the love shown by the two participants. My best mates had their weddings to two lovely girls - and the gay wedding I went to had no less class, not a single lack of love or anything else that made it look any cheaper than the other two weddings I attended.
Love is love.
Trouble is, I don't think people know what love is these days. "Love" tends now to be the lovey-dovey feeling you get when you're with someone. That feeling won't always be there; that's when love becomes based more on commitment. I'm not saying that a couple fall out of love, or don't love each other any more, but that it changes. That's what Hollywood couples (and others) whose marriages last a maximum of 10 years don't realize. They associate love with the feeling of that first blush of romance and when that changes they feel they've fallen out of love and get a divorce.
ReplyDeleteA couple of things here Clint
ReplyDeleteLife is not a Mills and Boon romance and "Love" in the chick flick sense does not necessarily equal marriage - indeed that is a modern vanity.
Secondly English is imprecise with its word for "Love"
In Greek there are four words with different shades of meaning - the relevant two are
Agape - unconditional love
Eros - passionate love
The former should develop in marriage while the later is often unfortunately mistaken for the former
The later of course by its. very nature is ephemeral.
In any case in societies struggling for survival the Mills and Boon notion of "love" is a luxury that cannot be afforded and marriages are arranged in which strangely enough Agape love develops and prospers
Indeed! And as all these couples have been together for many many years, involving sacrifice and a lot of compassion - they most certainly fall into the category of unconditional love.
ReplyDeleteThe Mills and Boon types of love you can easily see when you click on the Daily Mail or something.
So why judge unconditional love?
Marriage is about making babies and raising children Clint, "love" is a desirable but a bonus.
ReplyDeleteDon't mistake sexual desire and passion for love either.
How people live their lives is no concern of mine - important social structures that are about the orderly raising of the future generations are - and it concerns me that this fundamental thing, marriage, is being rewritten into something it is not and something that serves no real purpose except to indulge peoples vanities.
So married couples not having children is wrong Andrei? That's a peculiar one. I didn't mistake desire or passion - that stuff usually subsides after time, but love remains.
ReplyDeleteI'd prefer a marriage between two loving adults over a meaningless 'showmance' marriage that ridicules the concept of marriage for the rest of us.