Abiding

Over the centuries, poets and philosophers, alike, have claimed that there are many different types of love. Whether Aristotle or Tolstoy, Socrates or Dickens, they divided and conquered, separating the love of master from the love of servant, the love of fiancee from the love of wife, and so on. This is false. Need I say it again? There is only one love. It is our relationships that divide us, not the love that flows through them. The love of the master and the love of the servant are the same, and are manifested differently because the two cannot (and should not) perform the same acts of love. Even more critical, however, is the distinction between young and old marital love. It is a common supposition, in this day and age, that the love one has when one is young must necessarily change as one grows older. So, the first few years of marriage are looked on as the 'honeymoon years', and it is generally expected that the love of a wedded couple will cool and fade as they spend countless hours together, only to be (hopefully) recemented by the birth of a child - that is, a common bond strong enough to overcome their own petty squabbles. The truth is, however, that this change occurs not through the alteration of love, but through the alteration of the relationship between husband and wife. As Shakespeare said, "... love is not love / which alters when it alteration finds." How many couples truly know each other before marriage? How many couples can claim to be the best of friends? How many couples approach marriage with an honest and open eye, and see not a lifetime of marital bliss and carefree companionship, but a constant struggle alleviated only by the presence of one who fully loves and is loved? I daresay very few. Many young couples are in love with being in love, while others have settled for the 'good enough', and others, still, simply do not understand, on the most basic level, what it means to be married. Is it any surprise, then, that we are inundated by $40,000 wedding receptions and exotic honeymoons to the sun-soaked Greek Isles and the wine villas of France? These are our attempts to force consequence into something which should be consequential through nothing more than the reality of the love between man and wife. If you set one goal in life, then, let it be to love your spouse in the same way now as you will 50 years from now, and, when that time finally comes, you will find yourself with more wealth and happiness than you could possibly imagine.


Abiding

In time enough, when every youthful flush
has fled, and fleeting years betray their weight,
and, even now, the days are growing late,
remember what was whispered in a hush,

and how these words that stirred the morning air
have kept their comeliness, as we decline
and drink of less intoxicating wine,
for, though this vessel may not be as fair

as in the bright and early blush of life,
it is as faithful, and as fit to hold
its ardor, as your beauty waxes old,
and thinks it not on jealousy, nor strife,

but only happiness, in full supply
and charity, as this, alone, you know,
if ever was there certainty below:
our love will flourish, even as we die.