By Gayathri Naga
I have had guy friends who have told me that, “Why do you break your head over marks, you’ll get married soon anyway!” Seriously, guys?! Even though I have dismissed such comments in a light spirit, it hasn’t failed to provoke my thoughts. Marriage is not the sole purpose of a girl’s life, neither is it an accomplished end. And honestly, is that the only socially approved dream she is allowed to have? There are things in life beyond the concept of marriage which should be okay for a girl to explore or anybody for that matter.
Okay so you might ask, what’s the deal with this? Well, marriage is not what fairy tales or your Grandma’s bedtime stories tell you. It is complex and takes a lot of hard work to make it work. Nobody in their right minds would opt for one.(Well, if only we had a choice most of the time.) But not all of it is bad, it has its share of sunny sides too. It is just that one needs to thoroughly understand the needs and requirements of this union before getting into it and then decide if it is your piece of cake.
If you didn’t know about this before, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is such that an individual human’s needs are placed in a pyramid with basic needs at the base followed by psychological needs and then to top it off you have the self- fulfilment needs:
So, what does this have to do with marriage? Let me tell you how–
It is in the eye of the society that it places marriage in a person’s life much before the self- fulfilment needs making a huge blunder. Because if a person hasn’t fully discovered themselves, well, you can say that they are almost ‘half- a – person’ before reaching the self- actualization level, how could one possibly commit to union with another individual?
The idea seems quite redundant and shows symptoms of a blatantly misguided society! Well, the society doesn’t want you to reach your ‘full-potential’ or be your best, they want you to get married in your youth with a half-baked personality and a confused mind because they can’t stand the idea of you being husband-less or wife-less by the time you are 30! Are you kidding me? Get a grip, society!
- Don’t treat it like it is a destination.
It is completely OKAY for a person to not want to marry just as it is okay for somebody to realise all of the above issues and still want to marry! Nobody is denying the fact that marriage is a milestone in a person’s life. The issue creeps up when people start treating marriage like it is THE thing you need to do like it is a destination of sorts. Again, it is okay to not want to marry or to not want to be tamed or be somebody’s trophy wife!
It is fine if you think you aren’t cut out for this because there could be an urge to be independent and to not limit yourself by being somebody’s significant other. I often believe that ambition and love run opposite ways. So, if you have a dream, a passion, that burning fire inside of you to do something with yourself, maybe marriage isn’t your end. It could always be a means to achieve something else, but it is never the end in itself.
- Where yo sanskars at?
Since when did overachieving girls become an encumbrance? Because it would be hard to find them a groom?! So, girls out there, doesn’t matter if you are underachieving, unsatisfied with your choices, but yáll better get married so you can save your parent’s from embarrassment and societal burdens. And God forbid that you turn out to be few of those lucky ladies with a blooming professional life because you might just have to compromise all that at the wedding altar!
We aren’t assuming that only an unmarried person can be successful, people have achieved great things for themselves whilst being married. But it should be completely okay for a person if they don’t want to get married and if they are self-oriented or career-obsessed.
- It’s your life, a Sooraj Barjatya film or a career, up to you!
So, all those 30 year old single people out there who are haunted everyday so that their lives can turn into a Sooraj Barjatya movie soon, it’s okay if you guys are career oriented or feel the need to be independent and think that marriage is unnecessary just as it is fine if you think you want to settle down in life, but remember to never treat marriage as a great accomplishment! Never let the society tell you it is a crime to not walk down the aisle.
All images have been taken from Google.
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