Made in Heaven

Made in Heaven

Being single, I am often intrigued by married couples: I admire successful ones and I empathize with those who are trapped in unhappy relationships. Since most of my friends are already married, I am never short of lab specimens to make my observations.

When two people get married, they participate in a soul pact: their souls make a conscious decision to evolve together. A good couple is one that absorbs each other's karma, making each other stronger as a result.

I've likened a good couple to a well-balanced pair of binary star before. A couple who builds a relationship out of love, understanding and selflessness glows with a certain celestial brightness. There's an aura of joy and happiness about them which one can sense even from afar. But such made-in-heaven marriages are rare indeed.

Living together with someone for the rest of one's life can be a difficult thing to do. There will surely be ups and downs along the way. Marriage is a delicate act of merging two complex systems of energies. Each individual brings with them the influence and expectations of their respective families and friends. It is not something that two individuals can work out in isolation. Any act of selfishness on either party would often warp the relationship and cause instability to the system.

In solving engineering problems, we often make simplications; we assume there's no noise in the background; we assume that materials behave linearly. But real-life situations are more complex: we simply cannot predict every possible permutation and combination. Slight imperfections of design would bring about cumulative failures which ultimately could prove catastrophic, such as the case of the Columbia space shuttle.

Sometimes friendship last longer than marriages because friends always maintain a certain amount of respect for each other. We care for our friends but we do not impose our will on them. We help friends whenever we are called upon to do so but we accept the fact that we do not have a right to dictate their lives.

The problem is, many married couples forget to respect each another. Any displeasure is voiced out immediately without considering its hurtful consequences. It is indeed strange that we sometimes treat friends better than how we treat our life partners.

But then again, we all have our pet theories about what makes a successful relationship. Every newly-wed couple starts their journey in a blaze of optimism and bliss. In the end, all of us will still have to learn on the job.