We should get married! Or not

Marriage. Ah, such a beautiful word bears the glory of fine sunny Sunday in the midst of rain forest together with its little magical fairy. Well, the topic of this post started as early as we finished the psychiatry department and one of my friend said “Awas jangan sampai terjebak social pressure (to marry early) loh hahaha”. Marriage is funnily enough one of most discussed topic like, why do we talk about the same thing all over again when there are actually billion things to discuss? No idea.

Indonesian with our socio-culture setting has put us into somehow a situation where you kind of getting pushed to marry early just to blend in within the society norms, to fit in. You name it, family; friends; co-workers they all will ask you when you reach certain age -in most of the cases as early as 20 years old- about when will you tie the knot, that even we have jokes about this thing which became so popular.

Media social has made it big as well. Thousand posts of wedding ceremonies with the beautiful bride and all those wedding stuff flooded everywhere and within the era when everything is share-able I myself have seen more than 10 pictures of wedding-related posts on my explore-Instagram-feeds while writing this, when I basically follow no account of such.

Then, when it comes to marriage I’ve observed kind of polarization as we discussing stuffs, between me and my friends that men are more likely to think about the marriage : The responsibility, the money they should earn for they family while women tend to focus on the wedding and the happiness they would have with their husband and kiddos. This is of course only one of the stereotyping I made after listen to my friends' discussion toward this issue but somehow it gives me an idea of perhaps why men aren't really likely to marry early. I mean, the house rent and school expense alone these days are so crazy, not to mention the other expenditures.

When talking about marriage and its responsibility I read an interesting news on the newspaper weeks ago that revealed about the rising number of divorcing among Indonesian and guess what, most are happened to those aged less than 30 and while talking about it let me remind you something : It’s not only about you but most importantly your kiddos, and I have to say that I’m such a weak-hearted person when it comes to seeing these kids because no matter how happy they look we have no idea about the subconscious feeling that they burned within themself and things to fight and what’s the psychological effect that lies deep down inside them and they’re a-whole-human! a perfect creature that is so fragile and did nothing wrong to ended up suffering because of some adults’ ego. No sayang, it is never has no consequences.

But don’t get me wrong, I don’t say that marriage is a bad thing : No, it is a good thing, an awesome thing sometimes happen for bad (or to be specific : silly) reasons like –I’m old enough (saying by an 18 y.o girls/boys)- or –I need someone to take care of me- or –I have nothing to do so it’s better for me to get married- And believe me, I've heard those reasons myself and nah, that’s just ridiculous.

Marry you have to, if you have the right reason from your own self, a reason that is made when you have no pressure to do it for someone’ else and when you fully understand the consequence of your action. And by the way, I also want to appreciate my brave, brave friends who decided to marry at such an early age and have everything set up so perfect! I’ve witnessed how strong and wonderful they are because marriage should be more like a celebration of two souls that found each other, the one that you can call home and one way in creating a great team, for greater purpose. Yet, of course the glitter and gold on the wedding day is not to skip anyway.

So why we are rushing anyway? I mean, for those who have “the call” than it’s okay since you cannot fight against such nature calling but for those who –like me- having little less luck on romance, why don’t we wait? There are still thousands opportunities outside there waiting to be seized and as for the world itself is amazing and wondrous to be explored and there are things you can learn, skills you can master, people you can meet. Life is always great, to enjoy either together or all by yourself.

Just don’t force it! and every once in a while, let yourself free from all those tensions. Have a day for yourself to do things that you like and think about things you should do (other than getting marry of course) and put away that phone of yours because belief it or not, we still can breathe and produce CO2 and pumping the blood to all over our body even without that little rectangle-metal-box. Have fun, enjoy life! Because you’re a whole already before you meet the right person and that person is not the one that fulfills you –you have to do it yourself- but the one that multiply your happiness and half the sadness. Still, before he/she can multiply your happiness you have to be happy first rite?

So when talking about marriage don’t forget to whisper to yourself “ Who are we doing this for?”

Have a nice weekend!