As the parties die, the girlfriends become better conversationalists, the loans start to crop up and an actual career kicks off, you’d think you already have more than enough on your plate to handle. I mean, how could you possibly tackle sterner stuff in this fragile time of character building? So you knock off your shoes and snuggle under the blanket in your rented apartment and tell yourself that maybe this week, in spite of all your debts, you can actually afford happy hours with your friends in some fancy place in town. And then they tell you, “We think it’s high time you settled down!”. Suddenly you see the world around you crumbling to mere dust.
You haven’t even hit your thirties yet, the girls are too gorgeous to commit to one, you don’t have money left in your bank account for yourself by the middle of the month, you haven’t had enough time to travel, you haven’t visited the Playboy Mansion, you just aren’t ready for marriage. You see you life flashing before your eyes. All hope of smiling and laughing is fast evaporating. That happy-go-lucky attitude will have to be strangled to death. The dreams of shagging in Venice with some brunette on a gondola are but on a wish list that will remain unfulfilled. The very people who’re supposed to love you utter the question you’ve always dreaded. This would be a good time to contemplate suicide!
Dramatics and death of wish lists aside, it really isn’t reason to contemplate suicide if you had a partner in your life. Someone whom you’d want to love and cherish and hold for the rest of your life. Someone who’ll stand by your side through thick and thin, that special someone to exchange vows with and sail off into the sunset like all good fairy tales. Alas, what if you don’t have someone! This is the cue for your parents to play matchmaker!
Imagine this, your folks introduce you to nice girls and you eventually choose one that you like. You know, like catalogue shopping, look at the photo, dial the number and order! Then, after getting her parents’ seal of approval, you guys start dating. This is where the word “compromise” takes over. You guys start dating, notice that each of you has flaws that either of you absolutely despise, but compromise because the astrological charts spell absolute bliss! Once you start dating with your folks approval, there is no really turning back coz they’ve already set the wedding dates! Unless she’s actually an alien in a human form waiting to take over the world and your folks saw her metamorphosing out of her human form to report to Captain Zakoora!
This whole thing where they tell you that we’ll only be happy if you’re happy is more or less a myth. The fact that you agreed to go out with some chick you met over an hour of coffee in a restaurant, means they’ve managed to compromise your defences and you are about to raise the white flag soon. They figure he’ll go out with her and we’ll proceed to arrange the dates for the wedding, and he’ll shrink at the notion of hurting his parents’ feelings and eventually marry “the compromise”! They would’ve flourished as white collar criminals in Bogota!
Although we've never realised it, we’re actually getting older than we imagine ourselves to be. Our parents will always be proud of us and will invariably lend their support in all endeavours that we undertake in this lifetime. Like all humans, they have hopes and expectations. What we never realise about our parents is the fact that as we grow up, they grow up as well. When we were kids we always wanted to play as they worked hard to feed their young family. As we started hitting puberty and looked at girlie magazines, they were contemplating our future careers. Now we’re all grown up and we don’t need them anymore?
As surprising as it sounds, that’s in effect what we’re telling them, to bugger off when they start talking about marriage. We, and only we, decide whom we will spend the rest of our lives with. Whilst they have more or less lived all their lives in anticipation of seeing their children grow up to be men and women, we unassumingly cut them off probably the most important decision of our lives. And they say Brutus killed Julius Caesar…
Maybe what I’m getting at is that it isn’t their fault they want to see you flourish into life’s next hurdle, it’s ours. They figure if you get married now, you’ll have enough time to build your relationship, focus on your careers and eventually have kids. Every parent after becoming a parent dreams of having grandkids, something to do with their fascination for birth. There isn’t exactly a ripe age to get married. However, what most of us never realise is time is ticking on us as well. They are just doing what they feel is their parental responsibility. They’re just carrying out their duties.
It’s our fault because we’re still at a stage where we want the smartest, hottest chick who’s culturally blessed and will roll over every time we tell her to. Maybe its time to grow up and actually get a reality check. You don’t really have to marry some chick your parents introduce you to, you can actually look for a partner on your own. It is time that you compromised on certain things and actually try to make things work with the lot you have around you. Connect with the person who comes closest to complimenting you as a person and actually work on the relationship instead of waiting for some supermodel to fall on your lap!
It’s our fault because it never occurred to our simplistic mind that time will catch up with us as well. Well, time has caught up because they’re getting restless. The thing with all romantic stories is that they never really focus on the little compromises for relationships to work, they just focus on that morning after the great sex. With all the divorce cases keeping lawyers well-paid, lets try to avoid being a statistic. Lets not put off till tomorrow what we can do today. Who knows, it might work. If it doesn’t, well at least you can’t blame your parents for introducing you to a monster!
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