The Meaning of Marriage

(5-minute Read) I’d had a tough day on business in Cape Town. Now, the evening breeze off Camps Bay cooled me and my second beer. The tranquil remains of the day eased my thoughts into my favourite pastime – contemplating self-transcendence.

In particular that evening the question, “Is marriage still important?” occupied me. I had posed the question in a Facebook poll, and the votes were neck and neck. Although I’m a ‘yes’ man, those who voted ‘no’ had strong arguments that I couldn’t deny, like:

• People can commit to each other with or without marriage
• We should make conscious decisions on whether a relationship should continue or not – not be obliged to continue because of a contract. Once a relationship no longer feeds your soul, nothing should keep you from choosing your peace and walking away.
• Any commitment to love gives life purpose and meaning, so why should marriage be more important than a host of other loving relationships?
• Why should choosing to love one person in a contract be better than loving anyone we connect to in the moment?
• Marriage is an outdated, patriarchal institution.
• Humans grow and change – we are setting ourselves up to fail by expecting to stay in a relationship with one person.
• I do not define myself by any one person. I have no desire to lose my identity, so I will never marry. I have found everything I want on my own.
• Marriage is only a piece of paper. If a person wants to leave, or cheat, or destroy the relationship they will anyway. The paper just drags the pain out.
• If you love someone so much why would you decide to get the government involved.
• Marriage has absolutely nothing to do with love or romance.

Two beers and a funeral

A phone beep invaded my cerebral rambling through these heartfelt opinions. The raider was a message notification. Without touching the screen, I could see the short sentence from my mother… and my heart sank: “Grandfather has just passed away.”

A week later I had all the answers that confirmed my ‘yes’ to marriage. Who would have known I’d get them at a funeral, not a wedding.

I sat in a Maronite Catholic church surrounded by his eight children, thirty grandchildren and nearly fifty great-grandchildren, plus their husbands, wives, friends and extended families.

“Quite a legacy,” someone remarked in their eulogy.

A coffin at centre-stage, with his ninety-eight year old body in it seemed morose, and I wondered, “Are funerals still necessary?”

Suddenly, there was no such wondering about marriage. A knowing came over my heart, clearer than any rationalising, confirming to me, beyond any doubt: “Marriage is still important.”

Marriage is still important

You see, my grandparents had been married for nearly seventy years.

The love their bond manifested at the funeral of the last surviving of them, was deeper than any romance. It was a heightened human capacity to self-transcend, growing and deepening through decades of love, morphing into fear and anger and disappointment, and all of life’s pains, circling back to a deeper love again.

Their marriage was the epitome of our human ability to be altruistic. It was a spiritual movement. The gathering was testament, not just to a single life, but to a sacred union.

Theirs was not merely a piece of paper. It was the abiding road map to an ever-more meaningful life, culminating in death, and a mystical re-union. It was their vocation, chosen before God, in an old Maronite church, in front of a community of sincere subscribers to a sacramental tradition.

I learnt from that community that marriage is a mystical sign of Christ’s selfless love. The Maronites live their marriages with no doubt at all that they are unbreakable bonds until death do them part. They believe marriage is one of seven sacraments of the Church, signs of spiritual love, symbols of the divine mystery of unity-in-diversity, and offerings for expressing divine love in humble gratitude.

This mystical meaning overcame me at my grandfather’s funeral as the Syriac consecration resonated around us. My heritage was right here. My future extrapolated from here in this entanglement of two people.

As I sank into the moment, time and space retreated to just a dot – just a temporary emanation of an eternal energy realm. And their marriage, all marriages, were the most profound manifestations in this physical realm of that eternity, given to help our feeble natures rise to know the unknowable. Given to help us transcend ourselves.

In the communion of my grandparents’ family, I was inebriated by the spirit of their union.

The psychology of marriage

My grandfather was his own man, his own unique mix of good and bad, not defined by Granny. But together they made something greater than either of them individually.

Perhaps they both lost some of the identities they’d constructed for themselves in their youth. They might have set out with different dreams and visions for their lives. But they always trusted that where they were was exactly where they were meant to be – my grandfather told me that.

The wisdom traditions teach that it is in giving to the other, in forgetting self, that we find our timeless true self beyond any identities we construct in this life. Marriage is the ultimate ground for this self discovery, precisely because of the challenge it presents for two people to stay together no matter what.

Modernity portrays marriage as wedding days of confetti and beautiful people madly in love. As soon as that feeling flies out the window with the last of the confetti, and tough times roll in, we’re told: you have the right – no you have an obligation to your self – to walk away and find yourself.

But that approach to life’s hardships is not good for psychological growth. Growth doesn’t happen when we seek happiness on a personal mission, trying to extricate ourselves from anything that we think is blocking us. It happens on the road less traveled – on the difficult path.

In reality, most marriages are very seldom a bed of roses. That is precisely why being married is one of the best ways I know to grow as a human being. It takes us beyond self-actualisation to self-transcendence, where deeper compassion grows, and where enduring psychological contentment characterises our being.

But is marriage the only way?

I had my affinity for marriage re-branded existentially upon my heart. But what about the criticisms on my Facebook timeline? They required an answer from my brain. I had to respond to the ‘no’ comments because they are quite relevant in our world today.

So, I went about trying. But I couldn’t.

Because I know too many wonderful people whose marriages have ended, despite their best intentions. Too many marriages break people psychologically.

I kept thinking of the excellent young people who choose not to marry, and who find meaning and purpose – and compassion and love – never having walked down the aisle with another.

I know the patriarchal society my grandfather grew up in, and that some of that skewed chauvinistic programming still subconsciously clouds my own married mind. I hope my daughter finds her marriage free of those outdated remnants, should she decide to say ‘I do’.

My words arguing for marriage’s importance seemed futile and dry. After all words don’t ultimately change a person’s mind. One only answers questions about importance and meaning through one’s own perceptions and experiences.

The truth is we can make any path meaningful depending on how we view it. If we view our path as a perpetual revelation of beauty and wonder, where the very effort of the journey is a joy, and magic presences throng the roadside or cry salutations to us from hidden fields, giving up new secrets to us at every step*, we will be living to the fullest, whether married or single.

Our own meaning

For me personally, on a whistle stop tour from that beer in Camps Bay to a funeral, I came to appreciate my marriage anew… again.

Thank you Grandfather. And Granny.

Your marriage was, no doubt, far from perfect. Like all people, you had your failings. As George Orwell said, “A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”

But you stuck it out. You played the long game. You walked the road less traveled. And all of us, your family, are blessed for it. May your souls rest in peace, forever embraced by the spiritual reality you lived for in marriage.

You taught me that in defeat of imperfect humans, and imperfect marriages, we journey across our moment in time, to a distant shore, from where love shines back upon our departure point.

Even after accepting all the valid criticism, I still think marriage is important. And as with all traditional institutions, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

* From Practical Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill