UPON hearing tidings that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are on the final page of their relationship, my muse Hobbes paws me on the toes and looks straight ahead with green and great questioning eyes. “Is it better to marry and be happy and sad for a short period? Or to be married for a great many years of God-knows-what?”
We shall not ask Jolie and Pitt this, but perhaps we may ask the likes of Tan Sri Sir Lim Leong Seng, whom this newspaper reported on a few days ago. The small, wiry man, who turned 100 on Sept 19, had been wedded to Puan Sri Rosa Chow for 72 years. Do you not consider this amazing? May you answer Hobbes?
Think for a moment before the answer rolls off your tongue, for the words may betray your thoughts about the ancient wisdom called ‘marriage’. They may reveal that you are happy to be borne along by the strong new currents sweeping across old nations, such as China and Great Britain.
Of the Middle Kingdom, The New York Times on Sept 11 said “fewer Chinese people are getting married… last year 12 million Chinese couples registered for marriage, making it the second consecutive year the number has declined. Divorces… reached 3.8 million last year, more than twice the level of a decade ago”.
A response to the NYT report on social media led to a stupendous wave of comments, which beat down on marriage that it could barely breathe. The post, picked up by the BBC, said Chinese people are quite uninterested in walking down the aisle not only because of better education, “but also because they have good incomes and have lost the economic incentive to marry”.
The same squalls are hindering matrimony between man and woman in other countries. I have read enough to be persuaded that this massive storm, quite like the astounding technological leaps we are witnessing, is reshaping attitudes towards marriage the world over.
In Britain, for instance, more couples are choosing to live together unmarried. The Telegraph, citing figures from the Office for National Statistics, reported late last year that “the number of families headed by cohabiting couples (was) up by 30 per cent in a decade, more than doubling since the mid-1990s”.
And, from the US, some of the headlines on a world without marriage make me cry in astonishment and shiver with fright.
I ask my muse when the wave will hit Malaysia.
“In a country as mightily religious as ours, it may take longer,” says Hobbes. “God, parents and politicians will not allow it.”
I am not sure if he is being sarcastic. You cannot tell with felines.
He continues: “A time is coming when there will be all sorts of acceptable relationships, legal or otherwise, everywhere. Marriage as we know it will be just one of many.
“There will be a one-year partnership. Or five years. Or more. Between man and woman, between man and man, between cloned father and son, and between whatever you can think of. Once the tenure is over, they will go separate ways. Different kinds of families will emerge, nothing like you have seen before. But human civilisation will endure.”
By Jove! It is blaspheme against that which is sacred, I tell him.
“Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers,” Hobbes hisses disdainfully as he rolls over on his back. There he goes again echoing Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. “It has been foretold.”
My muse may yet be proven right by the unfolding years. In the present time, though, the omens are clear enough. I think a great number of people are already convinced that love reaches the arms of winter fast, as quickly as the mist lifts. They see this around them. They observe this in their parents’ lives. They perceive this in the lives of great people.
Thus they say and believe it is best to be practical about relationships. “Why strive for the burden and peril of marital vows when there are already so many other burdens to bear?”
Endings far too often are cruel and sad,
Look at Bradxit, the heart is broken and the spirit too,
Perhaps a beginning is best not to be had?
Let’s just make love, laugh, cry and sleep and not say “I do”
Alas.
David Christy has been with NST for 20 years, and possesses a keen interest in history.