Changing Your Address

(on marrying and moving homes)

It’s a mark of love

when you say yes,

whatever be the season.

.

However much you might know,

nothing ever prepares you

for the heights or the depths

of the world beyond the new door.

.

You will still have wings, though

the flight will frighten you,

and you will hold on, as you are not alone,

till you know that soaring is easy but

never a habit.

.

You feel everything you ever desired

will fall into place in strange ways,

asking you to to carry your past

as you greet the unknown.

.

Till you know, true love is never a test

and you can use it as a bed

when your wings get tired.

.

Then, finally, you are of the earth,

without any need to be known,

happy to be an address for each other.

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My son got married a few days back to his sweetheart. Both of them make an adorable couple.

As always I’m in awe of people in love who decide to marry each other. I know the atavistic urges and the reasons why we seek to gravitate towards a permanence in our deepest relationships, but I also know how the shelters of each other’s arms is ever so often open to storms and thunder. Roofs leak, houses get blown away. The reason why we marry could also be the reason we suffer.

But from time immemorial, marriage has been found to be a risk worth taking. Embedded in its imperfections, it’s scars, it’s lesions, are it’s flights.

But then, love always starts as an adventure, but finally seeks rest. And that takes time. And patience.

Like everything good, there is much which needs to be transversed, to be taken cognisance of - and forgotten. I sometimes feel sagas of love would do better with poor memories.

Do relationships get better with time? Do they eventually find plateaus of calm? What is the mystery of the alchemy which makes two different people find their peace together?

For me it’s - space and an ear.

Whatever is a couple’s decision on the most minute of things, it has to transverse a conversation, which has more listening then talking. We should never have a problem with a differing view - we grow as persons because of people who do not agree with us, but who have listened deeply and are also ready to change because of us.

Life is a cornucopia of choices. To restrict it to only our own world view is to asphyxiate our very soul. To love a person is to love their differences, to let them enlarge our worlds, to help let us find meaning in every part of our separateness.

That’s why, whenever I wish for love I wish for disparities (for the adventure) and kindness (for the good sleep). I doubt if love would demand any other generosity than this.

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Read the companion piece to this, where I first spoke of the wedding!!

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