I do not know about you, but I am fascinated by the differences and similarities among people from all over the planet. We all have words for essentially the same emotions, fears, needs and thoughts while things may not be translatable because they may not even exist from one culture to another. Why is it that we all feel the same but we put our feelings into practice in such distinct ways?
In some cultures bigamy is not only culturally accepted but socially necessary because of a huge disparity in the number of women to men. In such a world, do women and men love differently than I do? Simply because there is not a husband for the woman down the way, would I love my husband any less to be willing to share him equally with her? How could I be happy when he spends time with me, knowing that next time he will be with her? And when he is with her, even if she is his wife also and a member of my household, how do I forget my love for him? And he his love for me? I can theoretically understand the necessity of such an arrangement in societies where women always get married, where they all wish to get married. But I wonder if all is still for love or if it is more for convenience and future stability in the society as a whole.
Perhaps my idea of love, true love, is old-fashioned and idealistic. If my husband could not live through my having him one night and my second "husband" the next, because he loves me too much, how would I love him any less and hurt any less while he has a second "wife"? If there is no love, of course, the arrangement is only that, an arrangement. But when love enters into it, all bets are off. I have been told that in such arrangements, a man must be equally fair in all dealings with both wives. If one gets a gift, the other must also. However, often the heart leans more toward one over the other and, in such cases, this must be hidden. Tell me, how can it be hidden? Will not all three people know how much time is being spent with one another? How can a husband love one much more but still divide his time exactly in half? How can this be what I know of as love? Maybe I am mistaken.
Now, I must also admit, not every relationship has lasting and sustainable love. Sometimes people make regrettable choices and might not even care if a husband or wife has another partner. But, in such cases, why continue to divide time equally? Will love not win over all? These ideas pose me so many imponderable questions that it makes my heart hurt. And, while we are on the subject....why do we love one person and not another? Why are some people disgusted to look at a person or race of people who someone else is enchanted by? How do we connect on levels far beyond what the eye can see? Why do I talk to you and not someone else who might be more pleasing to the eye?
I believe in a force which guides these types of interactions. You might call it God, Allah, Yaweh, karma, fate, serendipity. You might not believe it at all. You might think that the randomness of it all is simply that, random. I happen to believe that so many things cannot be explained by randomness. Too many things are, at the very least, serendipitous, and at best, true blessings. Anyone who has met his or her true love in a place or time where maybe neither was ever supposed to have been can join with me in discounting the randomness of our lives. We may not know the plan, we may even buck against it, but there are things that we are meant to do and things and people that we are meant to know. I can certainly attest to that, coming from a monolingual family and having an insane love of and propensity for languages. We have abilities, faculties, that are innate in us, whether we choose to recognize and utilize them or not.
Back to the world of wonder....
If we, as human beings, see things as the most important in our lives, why are those the parts of our existence which are least relatable to others? Why are love, hate, joy, pain and the smile of the person you love the things that are most understood by every human heart?
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