Monday Musing
[ Karyir Riba ]
Dear readers, before anything else, let us give ourselves a pat on our backs to have survived a pandemic. With such a negative air caused world over because of the Covid-19, a vaccine which seemed like a distant dream has become a reality today and is already in the process of being administered world wide.
As agonising as the year 2020 was, this new year has come with a lot of hope. This said, it seems as if the second month of the new year has also arrived in the blink of an eye. And just in the blink of an eye, the most interesting day of the year has passed too.
Valentine’s day – this is one day that holds a different value for different age groups. As a teenager, this day is considered as a celebration of love and is awaited. Many choose the day to confess their love to their crushes.
However, ask any married person and he/she will simply scoff away the very existence of the day.
For any teenager reading this, you might not relate at all to what I am writing about, but tag along because this will be you in a few years from now (Yes, I can see it in my crystal ball).
As for married people, as you read on you will realize more and more that we are all sailing on the same boat (if not, you are not being totally honest). Gone are the days when Valentine’s Day was worshipped. It has become a thing of the past; not any more important than a Monday, or a Tuesday for that matter.
Since yesterday was Valentine’s Day, just for fun’s sake, let me take you back in time and titilate your minds a little.
Do you remember the first time you crushed on someone? Do you remember the feeling? Remember how you would only want to look at and be around him/ her..all your sense of hunger and sleep gone.
Your heart would thump and pound inside your chest when you spotted your crush. Remember all the butterflies fluttering inside your stomach even at the thought of him/her? Well, read on to find out what happens to these butterflies in the future.
As teenagers we thought our crush was the love of our life. That we would get married and live happily ever after (Lol). Lets be honest, we have fallen in love umpteen times after that with different people. Having said that, I’m sure we can all agree that the feelings and the butterflies of our first crush does not stand comparable to any other times that we have fallen head over heels for someone.
Valentine’s Day – in the beginning of your relationship, you are all lovey-dovey and touchy-feely. You just cannot take your eyes and hands off each other. You only want to give love and be loved. Separation for just the shortest period of time from ‘the love of your life’ seems like an eternity. You cannot feel your heart beating and feel like the world is crashing in on you. (Oh so dramatic!)
And so, you decide to get married so that you can live together, and live happily ever after(Lol, again!). Or so you thought because once you get married and get into the flow of a typical married life, your passion for each other starts wearing off and your display of affection towards each other becomes a thing of the past.
This is when you realise that all those fluttering butterflies inside your stomach have gone extint, or may be they were brutally murdered.
Its not like married people do not get butterflies in their stomach anymore. We do feel these butterflies when the husbands have put their used towels back where they are supposed to be, and huge butterflies when he has put his dirty laundry in the laundry basket. Into the laundry basket, mind you. Not around the laundry basket. Oh! That feeling of eternal marital bliss. I am sure all the wives reading this are getting goosebumps simply thinking about it right now.
When you are so busy fighting over why the towel is lying 5 cms towards the right from its designated place and why it cannot lie there, you do not have the time and the heart to go on dates or to bring gifts for each other. This, I see as a married-life cycle. There are no gifts and dates, so the towel becomes more important than the spouse, and since the towel becomes more important, so no gifts and dates. You see, the married-life cycle is real.
There cannot be any appropriate conclusion for this piece, because there will be no conclusion to the unending married-life cycle. But we have to admit that between all the banters and arguments, all the fights and controlling yourself from killing each other (thats an ultimate level of self control I must tell you), the one thing that keeps any married couple together is the undeniable love that they have for each other. The fact that spouses have learnt to live with each other without killing each other, proves that love is indeed blind! Or may be, because we know there will be no yummy food and the internet in prison.
