Who wrote the Book of Love?
I don't think it is found in Nature.
Seriously.
Birds do it. Bees do it. However that song goes...
Recently a colleague of mine proposed to his girlfriend. Like me, he is divorced and has children. He is a really nice guy, and the one I chose to do anesthesia for me when I had my surgery.
I was happy for him and watched the YouTube video of his proposal. He and his girlfriend often take walks with the dog on the beach. He had arranged for an architect to build a gorgeous sand castle with a larger-than-life sand book with the words, 'Will you marry me?' on it. There is a time lapse photography, and you can see the sand masterpiece being built. Then you watch the proposal. You see the look of shock on her face as she reads the words and he bends down on one knee, and pulls a little box out of his pocket. You see her shaking, and hugging him and saying, 'Yes!'. Then she is surprised to see his parents not far by.
There it was--the planning, the surprise, the beautiful ring. It sounds like Happily Ever After, doesn't it?
Well...let me tell you something guys...with my intuition something here on a deeper level is not right.
I met her at the Christmas party, and felt sorry for her. She was 'biding her time' until he would 'commit'. It was very obvious as a woman. I thought, why doesn't he make an honest woman of her?
For some reason, for guys in general, and possibly for the ladies too, there is 'dating' and then 'commitment' and then 'marriage' where a whole lot of 'mental masturbation' is going on.
Mental masturbation is the term one of my Chairmen of Surgery used to use to describe Internists on rounds--instead of getting to the point they went deeper and deeper into the Differential Diagnosis, or 'What ELSE could possibly be going on?' These Internal Medicine teams ENJOYED IT--rounds that last FOREVER in a Surgeons eye. They lived in their head and could not make a decision to save someone's life in a timely manner. In surgery we just don't DO that. Patients would die.
So let us get inside the head of my colleague:
- The divorce had to be final and the custody set
- The kids had to like her
- He had to buy a house
- He had to get a steady job
- He had to plan the 'perfect engagement'.
This is a NICE guy. He is marriage-minded due to his faith and church. He is very family-oriented. But without his 'ducks in a row' that relationship was going nowhere. Fast.
Why do I have a problem with this? It is against Nature.
I look at the birds. It is Spring. Boy meets girl in the tree. They court. They do a mating 'dance' in this courtship. That's it. They mate for life (if you are a certain kind of bird). Or they just mate.
They build the nest together, as equals. They raise the chicks together, as equals. They fledge them out of the nest, together.
There is no waiting for a ring! There is no one selling it. No one making it. No one selling bridal dresses either. And no Wedding Planners.
If you ask me, having been to divorce court not once but twice, and having to pay for all the legal fees for both of them, birds are smarter than us!
Which brings us to another point--boy birds are not abusive to girl birds either. None of that goes on. No cheating, no getting drunk, no getting boring or 'drifting apart'. Birds are birds! They have a good thing.
I apologize for the tone of this post. It is just that the disparity of the relationship, with the girlfriend having to be 'one man down' in the power balance really seems 'not right' to me. Society is whack, in this regard. In a big way. We have a lot to learn from the birds when it comes to being a couple.
Namaste,
Reiki Doc
