Single: To Be Or Not To Be!!!

Behold The Future Of Matrimony! 

Then People Pursued Wedlock For The Element Of Commitment & Now People Are Protracting It & In Some Cases Even Refusing To Take Vows To Enjoy Love & Longevity In A Relationship.  What An Irony! Commitment Has Become Dreadful & Derogatory; The Means Of Achieving Per Se Is By Not Committing. After All, It Takes 2 To Marry……..& The Rules Of The Game Are Pretty Conflicting!!!  Though one Is Alone, It’s Allegedly Better than Being two, The Number Signifying Conflict.

One Of My Friend’s FB Status Said “Single @ 30.” She Received One Interesting Comment On It, “Love Does Not Come From One Source Or From One Person, It Flows From Different Streams/Sources, We Have To Just Embrace It.” So True! However, Easier Said Than Done! Kindly Don’t Misconstrue, Different Sources/Streams Of Love As A Slideshow Of “That” Kind Of Relationship, It Simply Means Nurturing, Fulfilling & Enjoying Every Affiliation Around, Be It Your Friends, Family And Most Importantly SELF, Or Should I Just Say ‘Life’.

Well for me, I am a single parent; separated for...…well, it’s been a long while now. There is a divide in my mind, one part says get married.  How can you live like this forever? This is definitely not a traditional life & another (a Lion’s share) is too scared to change the ‘One opinion’ life style and become subservient to the new relations/responsibilities that it seeks.  To compound my muddled up mind, there Is This Sudden Spree Of ‘Don’t Get Married’ Advice Coming Especially From Committed Breed of acquaintance around, They strongly opine, “You Are Stuck With Your Blood Folks & Your Life Revolves Around Them. What You Watch On TV, The People You Socialize With…………… Your Likes & Your Dislikes” Yes, Marriage Is a Compromise, it is a loss of individuality; You Barter for Life Long Security & heredity. You are doing what you ought to do for the virtue of being born; you are helping the planet with custodians long after you are gone.

Marriage is One of Those Three Events Predestined to Happen In Your Life & Purportedly Only God’s Work (Significant, Isn’t It!). They say the Time & Place of Our Birth, Marriage & Death Is Fated. Now That Makes Marriage A Very Imperative Milestone In Our Existence.  And It Is Indeed! It’s a great feeling to be welcomed by someone when you reach home tired or even the existence of mere fact that someone is waiting for you. Can you imagine celebrating festivals with friends? No, it has to be with our people and at the place where we belong to. Isn’t it the best feeling in this world to be a parent; to see our children grow and be a part of their development process, to feel that unconditional love in them & to be responsible for them?  However, the Snag to Matrimony Is That This Landmark Comes Way Too Early in our life. The Societal Clock Ticks, The Pressure Mounts & Before People around Cast Doubts-You Give In. The Criteria’s Are Tangible- Appearance, Money & Stature, you tick the check boxes and get ready to embark on a journey from lonesome to twosome. However, the Reality Strikes When Flowers on the Bed Dries!  

The Best Age To Tie The Knot Is When You Are In Your Thirties. That’s Span Fair Enough to Figure out Your Life, What Is Best for You & Who Will Make You Complete. By Then You Have tried this & tried That, If Not Tried Gathered Enough Facts from Other’s Experience to Make the Optimal Choice. The difference between getting married before 30 & after 30 is that generally in either case you keep trying on relationships, but the former is road to somewhere & latter is a road to nowhere.

Ever wondered, having professionalism in our personal life! Family time (Dormant) is 9:00pm to 9:00am & office time (Active) is 9:00am to 9:00pm, there are extended office hours & compromised family hours. One of the major reasons why the marriages are going awry in today’s time is that we are not professional about our personal life. There are no reviews, no appraisals, no actionable feedbacks, no recognitions & no getaways to improve the family bonding. Even if trips are made it is performed as a duty.  Apparently husband and wives don’t have much to talk, but there are endless stuffs to squabble.

With marriage comes responsibility; the husband is the bread winner of the house & the wife’s duty is to take care of the living and the non-living things at home, hence both are on a different tangent altogether, what matters to one is hardly of any significance to another; their frequency is very difficult to  match.  The singleton on the other hand does both the duties. You see responsibilities are to be met by both, married or solo. The variance is that latter does it at his/her whims & fancies and not many sentiments have to be counted. Sounds Bliss!!!

What’s it like to be single? My transformation from being married to being single has shown me both the sides of coin. The first thing that I did as a sole parent was I went alone for a movie. The thought was forbidding but the experience was even better. Pretty much same was my reaction on the decision to separation.

The pre-requisites to enjoy your singlehood are:

 a) You should be gregarious. (Guess you are left with no choice but be social)

 b) You should love your own company.

It is not simple, to be on your own. The silence in your heart is not as much daunting as the silence when you come back home. Sometimes it makes you feel as if you are the last person left on this planet. On weekends & holidays you keep staring & scrolling the contact list on your phone wondering whom to call & then you change your mind assuming that friends would be all busy with their respective families. So you decide to wait for a phone call instead, but the gadget would just not buzz. Interestingly on reporting this to friends they say, “I was doing the same thing as you on weekend I just had few people around.” leaving you amused and baffled, “You have a family damn it, make use of it!” There is nothing more depressing than being sick and having no one around. God forbid if you have a ‘no nonsense’ neighbor than no one can save you from the agony that follows. Socializing also becomes so difficult at times especially the ones where having a spouse next to you is quintessential. If you don’t have one be ready to hear marriage sermons. Beware! Don’t get bogged down or get carried away with all those happy couples you see around. It is trickery you must not give in. Apparently, in the presence of a single person the couples sub-consciously value the person standing next to them like never before and tend to get more starry-eyed & cozy. And you miss looking good as one, with your better half. But what one misses the most as a standalone is the security & warmth that comes as a package only with marriage and the subsequent family it makes. As a singleton, you are your care-taker, you run your life, and as there is no back-up so there is no respite. You must always go on.

So, you are alone, alone …alone. I have realized that Facebook is for us singles. It is better to talk with its wall rather than talking with four walls at home, at least there is a response.

Once you learn to cope up with the cons of being single, and start accepting them as a part and parcel of the choice that you have made, you run the risk of becoming self-obsessed. It becomes your only way of life, the habit of being “single”. Accepting things makes life easy, you learn to entertain yourself. Make many friends instead of few (Sometimes no friend is also a welcome change), read books, travel, hone your hobby, work harder at job and earn a fun filled weekend full of new activities. And all this makes your life desirable. The haunted home becomes a meditation centre, where only peace prevails. Single is sexy, it is the coolest thing; the in-thing…isn’t it! On any given weekend, a normal couple would have wife giving a grocery list to her husband; he would get that job done. Perhaps, followed by a nap in the afternoon. Socializing with relatives far and near and maybe a movie or lunch/dinner to ensure peace at home front is maintained. Sometimes you may just want to ‘laze’ but when you have people back home waiting only for weekend, lazing is a privilege you cannot earn even after week long hard work. Also, I don’t understand this whole fuss about having a better half, with all I hear around it sounds more like having a bitter half. Ultimately no one can take the place of our friends; yes spouse is a big deal but if asked with whom you have the best fun? You may fake your reply but your mind will think of days & times with friends, where there are no inhibitions, you can just be yourself. As such the subset of the likes and dislikes of husband and wife is bare minimum, liking each other’s friends is a far cry, a very rare coincidence. Women generally get rid of all their friends for the sake of new relation and with that they expect their man to reciprocate, however it does not happen. So they end up envying them as ‘the other woman’ who is more tended to & favored. Bizarre isn’t it!

Even as I write this I am wondering so what is best, being single or following the traditional path. Can one maintain his or her individuality by being tagged to someone? Even to some extent. Guess the answer is a ‘No’. Then how does one enjoy life in that case. There’s only one life, and we should fulfill our bucket list as there may not be a second chance. So, what is the best course of action, get married & live a life where you multiply your responsibilities and find happiness in keeping everyone around happy or be single with all the fun and freedom……which seems hollow at times with no one who truly belongs to you and suffer the bouts of insecurity.

Life is not fair, but you have to live it to the fullest anyways. I leave my life in the hands of god, I give up, I cannot decide. One choice is unnerving and the other is the road less travelled.