Issue nº 211

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Marriage and Xenophobia

Some time ago, I took a straw poll among my blog readers regarding a few issues. Here are their opinions on marriage and xenophobia (fear or hatred of anything strange or foreign):

Marriage

Stella: I am condemned to love you, and that is my salvation. I shall have to live for ever in the shadow of your eyes, accept the fact that everything your hand touches arouses the best in me. All that I know is your love, nothing else interests me.

Prajakta: Two people join together, love provokes more love. Two imperfect beings unite, and perfection becomes possible.

Dasha: The ceremony of marriage is just a symbol, and we could live very well without all the pressures that it implies. Love is free and wild, and the more we feel this state of freedom, the more aware we are of the joy that it means to live with another person we have chosen, rather than with someone that society has obliged us to be with.

Leila: In my religion (Islamism), marriage amounts to many ways of worshipping God. I cannot understand religions that preach celibacy and asceticism, which severs human beings from their natural condition.

Nadia: I need love. I need someone to tell me that he is in love with me, and that’s all. I have no need for a white dress and a church blessing, but I seem to be the only one among my friends to think this way. They are all afraid of loneliness; if I don’t find someone who understands me deeply, what’s wrong about being alone? But the pressure is so great that I think that I am gong to have to accept it sooner or later, or else my self-esteem will be seriously damaged.

Liz: I’m going to get married in two weeks, and I’ve been talking compulsively about it. What conclusion have I reached? With or without a formal ceremony, a couple will always be what they can be. The only thing that changes is that we will have to disguise our fighting with one another.

Neel P.: I believe that a couple that puts God at the center of their lives will also know where to put marriage where it belongs. Being with another person doesn’t mean making a god of them, this should be seen as part of the divine blessings that affect our lives every day – like love, sex, music, solitude, and even suffering. Marriage is by no means destiny, but rather part of our path, and I am sure that God uses this union for a reason that goes far beyond perpetuating the species.

Paulo Coelho: I love writing these columns in bars, which is what I am doing at this very moment. In front of me sits a woman wearing dark glasses and leafing through a magazine. Some minutes ago she asked if I was hungry, I told her no, and she went back to her reading.

She could be at home, or at the cinema, or in another restaurant with friends, but I need her to be at my side. Sometimes she brings her sketch pads (she’s a painter), other times she has something else to do, but whenever possible she accompanies me to the many bars in life. We have been together for 27 years. We have lived through many a crisis, and survived them all. We build and rebuild our marriage each and every day, and though she seems to be the same woman that I met in 1979, she has known how to change and adapt with time, time that teaches us and makes us move ahead.

Just a few moments ago, a little boy came over to our table. He displayed a small bag of free samples of perfume and said that his mother was sending it to us as a present. I looked at the woman, and she smiled. She certainly understands that although there is a computer between me and the woman with dark glasses who sits in front of me, our souls are linked together.

Xenophobia

Ruth: Life means adventure, change, things that not everybody has the courage to face and accept. When one sees someone who is unfamiliar, a subconscious fear springs up: “why dare he take two steps forward and run risks where nobody knows him? I wonder if he wants to infiltrate his ideas and destroy the world that we have built with so much toil?”

D.H.: For a few months in 2001 I had an Arab student living in my home here in Boston. Everyone admired his kindness, and on many an evening we would gather in a local bar to chat about the customs of his country. Right after the attacks of the 11th September, the very same people who had laughed the day before at his stories began to hate him.

Dasha: Xenophobia isn’t just the fear of strangers, it’s being afraid of what happens between different generations. Most people are afraid of today, they prefer to live in the past. My country (Russia) is an excellent example of this.

Aspen: Every child, if he is raised with the necessary amount of strictness and freedom, could collaborate infinitely to make this planet a better place to live. But one of the first things we learn is “not to talk to strangers”.

Warrior of Running Water: Here in Denmark we have a festival that lasts about a week and attracts 100,000 strangers to celebrate life, share common interests and learn from the differences. People embrace for no reason except being on the same path, they sing and get drunk together. When the festival is over, a strange atmosphere takes over the town again, and strangers are once more seen as a threat.

Neel P.: We have to trust in love. We have to remember what we were told: “love your neighbor as yourself”. If we trust in love, we don’t need to fear anything any more, but the truth is that we never trust enough...

Radek: People in my country (Poland) lived through the tyranny of Hitler and the Soviet oppression, and they don’t seem to have learned anything. It terrifies me to see people who experienced the horrors of Nazism behaving the same way today, avoiding everything that is unknown or different. The worst of it all is that they use religion to justify their acts, arguing that all those who aren’t Christians should be banished from society. This blind faith is worse than having no faith at all.