Love/Arranged marriage

November 2006. I had been in India for only a few weeks, and I was attending English classes every afternoon of the week days. After a couple of classes, I could be somehow understood and I finally decided to take part of this big debate. With my western mind, my position was pretty clear and there was no way I could find even a tiny positive facet of arranged marriage. Ever since, I have seen so many situations and heard so many things about the subject that I can no longer say that I am 100% in favour of one or the other kind of marriage.

My arguments back then were straight forward: you grow up, complete your education and get married to the girl you are in love with and who also is in love with you. Most of the time, you are supposed to have met her while in high school or college. Your parents and other members of your family have not got to spend a lot of time with her, so they really can’t judge and say whether she is good enough for you. You know by yourself that she is the right one anyway since you managed to stay with her for a long time.  I was 19 years old when I thought that way. I also thought several other things that I considered absolute truths. I am now almost 25, and what I am absolutely sure of is that I know less about life than I used to think.

I simply realized over the years that things do not always go the way we want. Actually, they rarely do. Put this into the subject, it means that love marriage does not guarantee a successful marriage. Except the fact that your family may not accept your loved one, you may realize at a late stage that you got married for the wrong reasons, like beauty, money and popularity. I could give hundreds other reasons like the difference of culture, the lack of communication, jealousy, and so on. On the other hand, many successful marriages I have heard of and also witnessed mostly begin the same way: two best friends eventually become a couple and then tie the knot. 

Let’s analyse this case: the couple is made of two people who met randomly or not, became friends and then best friends, spend a lot of time together, got used to each other and ended up in a love relationship. We can say that the marriage become successful because the relationship between the husband and wife has very strong foundations. But wait a minute: take two people from two families that know each other and share the same values, religion and opinions, introduce them to each other, let them spend a lot of time together, get used to each other and eventually get them married! Isn’t it what arranged marriage about? Oh well!

Unlike what it looks like, I did not try to do some mathematical deduction to prove that arranged marriage is actually almost the same as successful marriages. I am unfortunately not that good in mathematics. What it proves is that my 19-years-old way of thinking was certainly not an absolute truth, even though it works in some cases. Arranged marriages may even have a higher chance to be successful because the families are always there to guarantee that everything goes well through constant checking and advises. Now I am not saying either that arranged marriages are perfect. What happens when one of the people really is boring? Nobody wants to spend a lot of time with a boring person. What if the age difference is too high? And most importantly, how will be the sex life if one of them does not feel the slightest physical attraction for the other? These are some questions that will never be asked in a love marriage since those aspects of the relationship have already been mutually accepted. 

The subject of love and arranged marriages is one that I had no doubt my way of thinking was the right one. Accepting today that I was wrong makes me entirely reconsider the way I see life in general. And I think it is for the best!

Money, money everywhere!

Money, money, money!

Here is one of the most famous topic of group discussions: Does money bring happiness? I am sure most of my readers already have debate the subject and have very strong arguments. I want to discuss it in another way, something I have never thought before, something a little bit crazy. We are going to use a lot of imagination. Come, jump in a world where, on the 1^st of January 2013, at any given time, say 12 o’clock, EVERYONE ALL OVER THE WORLD suddenly became a billionaire! Every single human being, wherever they are on the planet, discovered stacks of cash in some place around them. How would the world be by today, 8^th of February 2013? Here are my guesses.

Office

Factories would definitely be closed; nobody has ever been interested into chain work. They would not need to come and do painful work anymore. It would be the same with minors, maids and every other painful job done only because one have to take care of a family or so. It will also be the case with low paid jobs like cashiers in super markets and staff in shopping malls. It would be funny to see how we would spend the money we all would have with no sales person. Researches would be the only ones to still go to office; money isn’t necessarily their main purpose. Finally, I would feel pretty bad for the people (usually men) who always take the excuse of office to run away from their spouse and develop other activities, if you know what I mean.

Education

My prediction is that schools would be pretty empty. Parents would not need to go to office anyway; they can take care and educate their kids peacefully at home. One third of colleges’ population would remain, since some students do not go there only for the hope to get a good job and get money, some go actually for the knowledge they get there. Some might also go there to run away from difficult family situations. 

Church

What we people pray about, now that they are stinky rich? 90% of the prayers will be cancelled since everyone finally got what they have been asking for. Only the most faithful ones would go to thank and praise the lord for all the money they got. 

Health

Doctors would be in an absolute dilemma. They have promised to always do everything in their power to save people’s life, regardless of their financial situation. Still, health care is one of the costliest services we can find on the planet. I think half of the doctors would work only for their family and friends or people they care about. It would be really hard to work in sane conditions anyway since all the cleaning personnel would never step foot in there anymore.

Daily life

Without personnel, entertainment places, shopping malls and bars would never open their premises, which would create a big problem since people would want to spend all the money they finally have. Some would not hesitate to break barriers and serve themselves for free, because there won’t be any policemen or security personnel anymore; they would be all billionaires anyway. There is high chance of civil war in such a state.

Our life in 2013 includes so many aspects that it is just impossible to give an accurate description of what the world would be in everyone was suddenly rich. I have not talked about subjects like food, politics, terrorism, law, economy, travelling,  and everything else you can think of.

 I am pretty sure anyway that the result of the loss of our greatest motivation in life would be chaos! This material disorder would considerably affect our moral values and perceptions of the world, and I highly doubt that we, human beings will be able to handle such a change. At least, it will certainly not make us happier. So, is the world better in its current state, with some people insanely rich and others miserably poor?

 Let’s stop here with what I consider is a pretty sad conclusion! I expect some comments though on how you picture such a world!