The devil at the hearth

The devil at the hearth

(Milena Jesenska, 18. Jan 1923, Narodni Listy)

Why all, or almost all, of today’s marriages are unhappy (as if marriages had been happier in the old times), is a fashionable question and the topic of -to be taken seriously- a whole section of literature and -not to be taken seriously- each Five o’clock chat. Any question in the world is suited for social idle talk as well as for philosophical discourse, and questions that, in a manner of speaking, lie on the street are also being picked up by us journalists. This particular question however puzzles me every time; of course I could answer why today’s marriages are unhappy -what question could a journalist not answer? But I ask myself time and again: Why should they be happy?

That is where it begins. Two people - two small, lonely human beings, exposed to the entire hopelessness, dismay and forlornness of life, two children of men on the gigantic earth, that is so unbelievably,  unbearably and scaringly large, two people who are unhappy by natural and ordinary law -these two people should abruptly, spontaneously, around half past nine in the morning, locked in an apartment, having one name, one set of belongings, one destiny, should all of a sudden, just because they are two, be happy?

If two people marry thinking they do it in order to be happy together, they have already deprived themselves of the mere possibility to be happy. To marry for happiness is as selfish, as to marry for two millions, a car or a peerage, because happiness redounds as little to happiness as the two million, the car or the peerage. If anything in this world avenges itself then it is calculations and digits in matters of the soul. Two people should only have one reason to marry, and that is that they have no other choice but to marry, that they simply cannot live without each other. Without any romance, sentimentality, or tragedy. And this does indeed happen, even daily. Whether it is love or something else, it is surely the strongest and most imperturbable feeling in the world. Unfortunately, many people block this feeling out or overlook it in their lives.

Two people marry to live together. Why do they need happiness on top of this big present of potentiality? Why are people never happy with the naked truth and rather choose a dressed up lie? Why do they promise each other something, that they -not they per se, but the world, nature, heaven, providence, life- can never achieve, and no one ever will? Why do they tie a real, earthly contract to conditions of literary phantasy, which is what happiness is? Why do they demand more from the other than they themselves can give, why do they even demand more of such a big, earnest, deep thing like a shared life?

If we would consciously consider marriage beforehand, we would naturally notice some things that we usually do not think of. For example, that living together is by no means easier, but harder, than living alone. A single person’s solitude is made up by many conveniences: half the responsibility, freedom, independence, or simply the possibility of going to Australia whenever you feel like it. Marriage is so hard because the moment you enter it you have to forgo all it does not offer. And that’s the other reason today’s marriages fail: People marry without definitively deciding themselves for each other. Or better said: without deciding to let go of everything else.

It is tremendously difficult to get to know a person. I think I am not exaggerating when I say that you can either get to know someone after half an hour of talking or after living together for 10 years. It is almost impossible that two people, before they marry, will as much as guess who they are and whom they marry. If they know all of each others history, their ideas, passions, convictions, opinions and beliefs, they still do not know their socks, their sleepy eyes, the way they rinse their mouth in the morning when they brush their teeth, how they behave when tipping a waiter - because about his depth one person can deceive another, but not about his shallowness. Thus, each marriage holds in itself thousand risks of disappointment and many possibilities of failures, and there is only one protection: to simply accept the risk. Social convention commands to overlook, in the name of love, all sort of different characteristics in a person, like nationality, political opinion, and religious belonging, and we do that. But let us go one step further: Let us overlook his apparently negligible characteristics. Let us put aside the modern Karenin hysteria and let us overlook big ears, and badly tied ties. Each person is himself a small world. The more extreme a person is, the more holistic he is. The less possibilities and talents he has, the deeper and more securely he has them. And if he only has one, it will be the most precious to him. And exactly like you cannot expect of a blonde person to have dark hair on Tuesdays and Fridays for a change, you cannot expect of a pedant to enjoy dancing shimmy, or of a simple person to understand Kierkegaard, or of a painter to be interested in mathematics, of a melancholic person to sing songs, and of a solitary person to throw a party. This seems like a very trivial observation but surprisingly only few people understand it. Usually they criticize exactly that in each other which makes their own inner personality, and they do not understand that it is the duty of marriage to tolerate the nature of the other, yes, even more, to tolerate in such a way that the other feels entitled to be like he is. In the end it is always just self-confirmation that one person asks of the other. A proof, that he is loved “despite of”. Such a “despite of” everyone of us has, and exactly this is the reason why he is unhappy.

Never will I  believe that people live together simply out of sexual, erotical, financial, or social necessity; people live together to have a friend. To have someone in the world's lonesomeness who affirms their right of existence with all of their existence’s faults and deficiencies - because what is friendship for if not to support a damaged self confidence? To have someone who spares them from punishment, vengeance, vicious sentiment, justice, bad conscience. Does a home have a different purpose than to shelter a person from the world and, even more importantly, from his own inner mirror?

The greatest promise that a woman and a man may give each other is the sentence you smilingly say to children: 'I will not give you back.' Is that not more than 'I will love you till death do us part' or ' I will be forever faithful to you'? I will not give you back. This contains everything. Decency, truthfulness, homeyness, faithfulness, belongingness, decisiveness, friendship. How infinitely big is such a promise compared to this little happiness.

In short, it almost seems to me that our marriages are so unhappy because we are making it so damn easy for us. It is very easy to accept a promise of a person which that person cannot keep, and after a year, when it wasn't kept, to sulkily walk away. It would be much harder and more honest to promise what one can keep and to truly keep it. All these phantastic great words are meaningless excuses, as is proven by the first truly difficult situation when one was supposed to act decently. But why do people not promise each other to never be too lazy to bring an orange, a bunch of violets, a new pencil or a bag of raisins? Why do they not promise to appear washed to breakfast, smelling like soap and water, fresh and nicely dressed, the day after the golden marriage as well as any day until then? Why do they not promise to rather hit themselves when they are angry than to make disgusting, tasteless, and ugly reproaches? Why do they not promise to always make an effort for the other and his interests, be it history of art, soccer or a butterfly collection? Why do they not promise to grant each other the freedom of silence, the freedom of solitude, the freedom of unrestrained movement? Why do they not promise those infinitely difficult "trifles", that can be granted but never are, instead of something as secondary as happiness?

Should marriage have a meaning, it needs to be based on a broader and more real foundation than the longing for happiness. Let us not fear this little bit of suffering, the bit of pain and unhappiness. Try once to look up for 5 minutes to the starry night sky, spellbound, sincere, and concentrated. Or stand on the top of a mountain from where you can see a little piece of earth. And you will understand, after a while, the importance of life and the unimportance of happiness. Happiness: as if the ability to be happy was not dependent on us and us alone! As if the talent to be happy was not a special talent like the talent to sing or write or repair shoes or do politics! Give a person everything, all he asks for, cover him with love, gifts, little presents, everything he wishes for, still he will not be happy. And beat another person so he can barely breath, and yet, as soon as he discovers a bunch of fresh carrots, shining red with green, he will be happy.

There are two options in life: either accept your destiny, decide yourself for it and live with it, respect it and own it with its benefits and losses, happiness and misery, do it in a brave, honest way, without bargaining, be generous and modest. Or instead seek out your destiny; but with this search you lose not only strength, time, dreams, rightful and good blindness, and a certain instinct for things, with this search you also lose your own value. You constantly get poorer. What is there to come is always worse than what you had.

And moreover: for search you need faith, and to have faith you need probably more strength than to live.