For this question, lot of guys gives funny answers. I used to stir those conversations with witty remarks. We accepted our plight.
Men complain that once felt-so-good emotions had gone out of the window after marriage, just like that.
If you look at it analytically, the answer is yes.
If you look at it in the lens of evolution, the answer is “ wrong judgment”.
Now would you rewind your life back to age 5. You desperately wanted to be a teen, and have more fun.
Rewind your life back to school days. You desperately wanted to get out of that, only to find that world out side school is almost a jungle. With in 3 months you feel missed. Then you think school wasn’t that bad compared to campus. Finally you get out of campus and start working, and you think, “Wasn’t that campus thing had more fun?”
Now forward your life to the date of marriage. You desperately wanted to GET IN ! right ?. See…same old story. Now in this line of thinking, I think, we all should give a reflective thought. Look at your normal day, just visualize from getting out of bed to getting back in to bed at the end.
Chances are that you almost sound “ eerrhhhh”. Does it sounds like a same old story? Right here lays the problem. It’s a problem of understanding. How we spend our time, project our lives in to future.
My life took a turn when I saw the following lines in a book.
“ Love is not looking in to each other’s eyes; it is looking together in the same direction ”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
At that time, I was in a curve that almost sounded routine: wake up, get dressed, fight the traffic, drop wife to work, 10 hours at office, part 2 of fight the traffic, pick wife, wash the day off, jumping to the bed to be alarmed the next morning. It did sound like a repeat telecast.
You can accept things as it is. But acceptance is short-lived. You get the same thoughts the next day. It becomes a pattern.
Reality of evolution is painful. It requires you to think in a different angle. So if “ acceptance is not the answer, then what is it? >>> “ Right understanding”.
Understand that things change, including my self. Think of how your perceptions have changed from school days to now. Think of how that affected your friends and family. And think how your friends and family have changed. Think of your school. If you go there now, you will see many changes, it is not the same school you’ve been to. It has changed. It has progressed, or may have declined over time.
Yes, things have changed, right now it is changing, and it will continue to change.
Scary Hah? No, not really. It needs a personal journey. Because the truth for each of us lies with in us, not out side.
Now I quote, one of the lines by Michael Caine on performing magic, from the movie “Prestige”. (A beautiful movie about 2 friends who became rival magicians, trying to outsmart the other.)
“ Now you're looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course; you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.”
The best and the only way to get out of the cycle is to build up your mission statement.
I have done it 3 years back, and this simple statement stood the test of time. It provided me with the right direction to drag me out at desperate situations.
Now you may be pondering, “this blog started from love and marriage and now it ends up with a mission statement”.
The mis-direction of life is always the culprit for our stress and un-human behaviour. It is a vicious cycle. Imagine you are in a cyclone (in your mind) and trying to survive, will it ever occur to you that you should treat your partner right? It won’t, because you are in constant struggle with your self.
Think about it, personal well-being is central to make others happy.
I ll catch up soon on “ how to make your own mission statement”.
