Let your love be stronger than your hate or anger.
Learn the wisdom of compromise, for it is better to bend a little than to break.
Believe the best rather than the worst.
People have a way of living up or down to your opinion of them.
Remember that true friendship is the basis for any lasting relationship.
The person you choose to marry is deserving of the courtesies
and kindnesses you bestow on your friends.
Please hand this down to your children and your children's children.
- Jane Wells (1886)
With a sense of nostalgia, I always listen to stories being told about "back in the day", almost as if I have personally lived through them. A comfortable, homely feeling is usually bestowed upon me during such encounters. I even joke with my mum, asking her why she gave birth to me so late in time, because I believe I was meant to be, or was, alive in a different era.
Life, then, was such a simple state of affairs...or so it seems. Relationships were about the other, and the giving of oneself, much akin to Christ's selfless, sacrificial love. The millenials generation is one that is so full of itself. I mean, even the term "selfie" is palpable enough of what a narcissistic generation we are in. Me, me, me, myself and.....well, me. We are but a self-seeking toddler that has not yet grasped the concept of an existing world outside the subjective.
A favorite vlogging couple of mine are currently going through a divorce. After 8 years of marriage, and three children later, Mr. Husband decides he just doesn't want to be married any more. Imagine, just. Never mind that despite being publicly humiliated because of his cheating scandal, the Mrs. defended his honor when everyone attacked him, especially for being a Christian on the pedestal of the public eye. She still chose to forgive him, and she chose to work through the marriage by going for couples' counselling. Why, then, did he make this decision, despite his vows, despite her efforts when he was the one that defiled their matrimony, despite the stigma on divorced mothers, and most importantly, despite the psychological implications it will have on his children? Well, using his own words, "I just don't want to be married anymore." Burried in the muck that is this sentence lies the words, "I feel nice when I have affairs, and these women interested in me massage my ego and I just don't want to be married anymore because the adult responsibilities of being a husband and father do not interest me as much as my lustfull adventures entertain me." An immediate gratification-seeking tot, is all he is.
The vintage advice of Jane Wells not only applies to marriage, but frienships and all other relationships as well. If only we could put aside our egos and compromise for the sake of our loved ones, or rather, those we claim to love. If only we could release our own reality, which is but a perception, and take the time to find out what really is, rather than thinking the worst, where the worst does not actually exist. If only we could be kind to one another, not because they deserve it, but because it's not just about our own world. If only we could overcome the center of the self, and become the other and empathise. If only we could love one another, love in its purest and simplest form, just because God is love. If only, then, wouldn't the world be as perfectly harmonious as Beethoven's 5th Symphony?
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