Last Friday the soothing melody of love serenaded the cell group. We talked about the one subject, love, that is most elusive, most incorporeal and most celebrated in the history of humanity. When love throws her tantrum, no lover is spared. When love sacrifices all, it also conquers all. Love comes in many names and is known by all, even the loneliest. Even the recluse has experienced love in her highest form, that is, his mother's sacrificial love. Without love, life dries up and dies.
The Bible gives us a glimpse of who God is by saying God is love. Indeed, He is, And the greatest of these...hope, love and faith, is love. Although many people have tried to define love, it remains beyond definition. Love is also beyond the scrutiny of scientific instruments. We cannot extract a unit of love, place it in a crucible and study it. We know that this world runs faithfully, if not slavishly, on a plethora of fixed natural laws. Newtonian three laws of motion govern our world as we see it. And Einstein's law of time and space or relativity governs the universe or universes as far as our telescopes can capture it. But what or who governs love as we individually feels it? Who set the laws of love in motion? Who ensures that love follows a predictably linear pattern that can be replicated in a lab?
The miracle of love is that it cannot be domesticated in an equation or encapsulated in a series of mind-numbing formulae. Let me explain. In physics, we know about Einstein's brainchild, E = mc2. This equation is immutable, unchanging. With this formula, we can know the amount of potential energy locked in an atom. And mind you, it is mind-bogglingly huge because it is the mass of an atom multiplied by the speed of light (that is, 300,000 km/per sec). Imagine the amount of potential energy locked inside a grain of rice! Even force can be captured in a formula. Remember this, Force = Mass x Acceleration? How about the area of a triangle? Well, the last time I checked, it was still equal to 1/2 base x height.
But how do we measure love? How heavy or light, or how long or short, or how wavy is it? To even ask such questions would seem silly. Because love is not reducible to any form of equation, it is therefore immeasureable. It is as immeasureable as human consciousness. Who can tell for sure what another person is thinking just by looking at him? Can we put someone through a brain scanner and observe some part of his brain lighting up and confirm with deductive certainty his thoughts, motives, dreams and intention? Surely we are more intricate than the sum of a few cerebral lights up! In other words, we are more than the sums of our parts and the atheists or materialists should, at this juncture, take a moment to dismount from their high horse of logic, reason and rationality and consider the vastness of their ignorance instead of regaling in their own deluded intellectual superiority.
Coming back to love, we discussed about marriages and relationships. This is where I touched base with you guys. Most of us are married with children. Some of us are reasonably happy with their spouses. Some are not. Some are in a difficult phrase in their marriages. Some are even skeptical about the choices they had made. These are serious issues and they require our serious attention. While it is easy to fall in love, it is hard to stay in love - especially with the other all-too-familiar half after the sweetness of courtship had turned sour and the honeymoon of marriage had given way to the reality of living together. If familiarity breeds contempt, then marriage is a major breeding ground for such contempt to flourish into hatred, unforgiveness and personal revenge.
In my 10 years of being a divorce lawyer, the most ironic and sad fact about divorce is not the blood bath involved in the division of assets or the cat-and-dog fights for custody. But it is the recurring thought of how the same couple who were once ready to "die" for the other is now so bent on "killing" each other. I had one client who told me that nothing would bring her greater joy than to wish him an early death! Sadly, the marital vows of, "I do" has now become "I don't care". This, I guess, is the eighth wonder or mystery of the world: How can a marriage once based on unconditional love and unquestioned devotion turned so disastrously and irreversibly bad? Well, any takers?
I had another client who came to me to request that I save her marriage. Her husband had told her that he wants to leave her for his mistress. He wanted to start a new life with his new found love. She was of course devastated. And to kick sand into her wound, he had also transmitted STD to her and her condition was incurable. Despite all these unspeakable betrayal, she still wanted me to save her marriage. As a Christian, she told me that a marriage is meant to be forever as spelt out in the marriage vows, "Till death do us part". But sadly, I told her deadpan that most spouses suffer from what I can "mortal impatience". They just can't wait till death to part with his or her partner. Death is too long a time for a divorce. If the marriage vows were to be more realistically updated for their sake, it would read, "Till boredom, do us part" or "Till another hot-thing comes along, do us part."
My client could not accept divorce because she mistook "fantasy" for reality. The marriage vows are idealistic declaration. It is like a public announcement on par with the PA system in a shopping mall. Of course, we are admonished to treat the vows seriously. And I do not doubt the sincerity of a marriage couple declaring their vows to each other and the world at large. Alas, if only marriage is as perfectly worded, neatly aligned, systematically paragraphed and impeccably presented as the declarative, romantic and touching wording in the marriage vows. In other words, the marriage vows are perfect but we are not.
Our marriage does not revolve around the vows. Neither is it defined by it. At best, we take it as a reminder or a guide. Our marriage is, more appropriately, defined by our daily choices and actions and in making the right daily choices and actions. Do not, for one second, mistake pre-marriage bliss with post-marriage bliss. Or pre-marriage understanding with post-marriage understanding. Marriage is a lot of work and it does not end with a grand Chinese dinner or a public declaration of a mutually kindred inner resolution. Like driving, getting married is like obtaining the licence to drive. It is just the start. The road ahead, however corny this analogy may sound, is invariably long and winding.
If I can only name one enemy of love, it should be boredom. Boredom robs love of its passion like cancer takes away life from a person. So, be on guard against boredom. King David was bored when he committed the one act that marred his kingmanship for the rest of his life. Moses was bored (among other emotions) when he killed his fellow kind and became a fugitive for a major part of his life.
Personally, my marriage would have faltered or stagnated if not for the injection of some creative, child-like fun and humor once in a while. I am a lot of things to Anna, mostly not so positive. But one ability I have is the ability to make her laugh at the most unlaughable period in our marriage such as when she was fuming mad at me. Maybe your gift is different. I guess it could be being romantic at the right opportune time? Or making your spouse feel important and secured? Or making her feel treasured and loved? Whatever it is, don't take your spouse for granted. Take this as a rule of thumb: if you feel that she or he is okay or fine, that is usually the time you should start to inject some excitement in the marriage. So, go tiger!
Let me end with this thought: Always love for the love of the sake of love. A bit convoluted right? It is quite deliberate, for emphasis. Anyway, it simply means to let your love be an end in itself. God is love. And God is the uncaused cause, or He is uncreated. He just is and will forever be. So, if God is love, then love is the ultimate cause or the final explanation of all things seen or unseen. Love is the ultimate motivation of all our actions. It is therefore an end in itself.
Love is not contingent or conditional. We jeopardize our marriage if we love with strings attached. It is like telling your spouse I love you but only in a way that you uplift my image or you make me more secured and less lonely. Worse still if you say I love you because I need to apply for a HDB flat. This is a needy form of love. And it is self-centered and self-profiting. It is simply a love based on quip-pro-quo. Or a love based on "what can I get in return for loving you". So in the end, borrowing the words of Richard Templar, who authored The Rules of Love, we must want to love and not need to love. Pause for reaction?
This dreamy December, let these words by Jack & Carole Mayhall of the Navigators, who co-authored Marriage takes more than Love, breathe life, soul and passion into your marriage, "Marriage is an enormous enigma, a colossal conundrum. It is agonizing, adjusting, pain and pleasure, delight and demands. It is a mixture of the mundane, the ecstatic, the commonplace, the romantic. It comes in waves, ripples, bubbles and splashes. Its days contain thunder, sunlight, hail, wind, rain. Its hues are the rainbow's spectrum, but prominent are shades of red, purple, yellow and grey. It is intimacy, distance, closeness, awayness. It is a quiet melody, an earthy novel, an obscure mystery, the greatest show on earth. It is choices. Choosing to love, to understand, to enjoy, to know. It is choosing...marriage."
Your challenge for what's left of this year is: To love your spouse in ways that surprises even yourself. So, go tiger!
Have a Romantic December!
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