Self-imprisonment

Young and beautiful birds, out of sheer curiosity, gets into a cage thinking that they would have a marvelous time inside it, oblivious of the consequences they would have to face. On the other hand, the birds, which are already in the cage, are equally eager to get emancipated from the cage that they are confined in.

Parents suffer for many decades to bring up their children, educate them and so on. They tend to forgo their needs, just for the sake of their children’s wants. But later, when their children grow up and attain maturity, the kindness, love, care and sacrifices made by their parents vanish into thin air and the most important component of their life seems to be their spouse. They are ready to do everything just for his/her sake; even to the extent of attempting suicide and other conducts, inapt of a civilized human being.

Gradually, when our parents attain old age and when they need our help the most, we reciprocate their kindness with cruel and callous acts. People even tend to go to the extent of driving their parents to the outskirts of human settlements.

I feel we are insane because we are shunning our parents and prioritizing the partner that we know just for few years which I feel is too less a time to know everything about a person. An individual with whom you share a bed for a night or two cannot just take the place of your spouse and more so, they can't be more important than the parents who have been sacrificing for decades altogether!

Do our parents crack every sinew and muscle to bring us up expecting such treatments that are unbecoming of a son or a daughter? Don’t they groom us with love and care expecting us to lend a helping hand when they grow old and frail?

In Buddhist philosophy, we have something called tha dam tshi and ley ju dey which tells humankind to be faithful and that, every cause has its own ripple effects. The effects of any cause that we breed would strike us one day or the other. Therefore, the effects of the spiteful deeds that we do to our parents would be unfathomable!

I view marriage as a trap and almost everybody go in search of their own trap. Marriage is a kind of self-imprisonment from where most of the people yearn to be set free. Ultimately, love tends to end up in marriage and there are few faithful people who are happy with their marriage while most of them stay together out of compulsion. I believe that compulsion would never beget perfection.

But this is neither to point out that marriage is unimportant, nor am I trying to say marriage should be banned like the government did with tobacco. It is very important and I am also an outcome of a marriage. But what I am trying to emphasize on is that, marriage is not just for the sake of procreation; there are many more important values that it entails.

Moreover, if marriage has to be successful, the partners have to be thoroughly scanned by each other through different means. Marriage without proper understanding between the partners would lead to a baseless relationship. Marriage is not like signing a contract for a certain period, rather, it is a sacred bond meant to remain as long as you live. A couple who consent to marry should also agree to share not just happiness, but sorrows, whatsoever!

Therefore, a person with whom you talk over a phone, or a person with whom you chat on social networking sites like facebook, Hi5, MSN, et al or a person with whom you go for a walk or two cannot miraculously turn out to be your partner for life.

I am neither a person who has experienced marriage, nor am I a love guru but I have written this out of my sheer concern towards the kind of outlook that most of the Bhutanese have towards marriage.