Robin May Flemingのインスタグラム(robinmay) - 1月24日 05時52分
I recently read a comment that hit a nerve. It was from someone I didn't know, a name I didn't recognize, and yet it felt so familiar. This person, from behind the high walls of their private account, had decided to tell a loving, childless couple I follow that the only thing missing from their happy, adventurous life is children.
Now let me make something clear: I think getting married, for example, is a pretty special thing. And yeah, for better or for worse, it absolutely felt like the conclusion of a lifelong quest, mapped out for me by TV, movies, books, magazines, Hallmark ads, and the occasionally obtuse elder who'd wonder aloud when I'd finally settle down and be just a little more normal, please.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, SOCIETY. I got married. ? And yet — gasp! — it didn't solve all my problems or answer all my existential wonderings. It didn't make me suddenly fit. It didn't make me suddenly whole. Nor have I ever, for one moment since, felt the need to impose this massive life decision on anyone else. I've never felt moved to tell a friend, family member, or internet stranger that they won't know "love" or "fulfilment" until they hitch their life to a partner's and promise to match it, step-for-step, forever. I've never even thought it.
Because 1. It's not that easy. 2. Marriage is not for everyone. 3. It doesn't just happen when we will it to happen. And 4. Ew. What would this world look like if we insisted that everyone look like us? If we ignored the unique mingling of circumstance that brings us each to wherever we happen to be?
There's something about comments like that stranger's that taste a little bitter to me. Like under all that "I wish you could know what I know" there's a dash of something wistful on the verge of going rancid.
I've heard it from folks in my own life. In a single breath they tell me how much happier I'd be with kids, how much healthier (?), how the frivolous would cease to matter. And, mortifyingly, they convince me, making life's weight on my shoulders press heavier, the doubting pit in my stomach yawn wider.
But beneath those breathless insistences, I detect something that has nothing to do with my life at all: What if...
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