Many people like to make big ceremonies out of their
weddings. All their creative energy and planning skills go into producing the Event.
They place highest priority on coordinating colors, on designing place cards,
on rallying musicians and photographers and ushers and bridesmaids into one big
extravaganza.
I’m not that sort. If I should ever get married, I’d like
the occasion to be as low-key as possible – a drop-in at the Courthouse. When I
first read Shakespeare’s MacBeth, I
was moved by the description of the way in which the Thane of Cawdor went to
his death. Malcolm, King Duncan’s son, famously said of the purportedly traitorous
Cawdor:
Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it. He
died
As one that had been studied in his
death
To throw away the dearest thing he
owed
As ’twere a careless trifle.
Ah, but I never thought I would need that kind of external
prod. I thought that when I loved, I would do so whole-heartedly, with so much
intrinsic fervor, that I could make a trifle out of the ceremonial binding
itself. Drop into the Courthouse for a second – and be bound forever. Take that
one step forward and plunge into the infinite. Entering so merely into
something so mammoth was the thrill for me.
I’m reconciled to the fact though that it’s different for
most people. They want what at least initially seems like the fun of all that planning,
and then they want the enforcement that a big planned event gives to their
decision. But, as most talk show hosts preach to their Bridezilla (and sometimes
Groomzilla) guests – there’s the danger of making the wedding, rather than the
marriage, the point of it all. While they are minutely color-coordinating
flowers and placemats, they overlook their partners completely. They know the
ingredients they want in their California sushi rolls, but there’s so much they
don’t know about the people with whom they’ll presumably be spending the rest
of their lives.
If I were in charge, I’d correct that state of affairs
with a simple expedient. I would require that everyone contemplating marriage
be required to submit a biography of their prospective spouse before tying the
knot. No biography – no marriage license. I would enforce this requirement with
a special category of courthouse employees, perhaps called “Readers.” They
would be given the task of reviewing the biographies submitted in contemplation
of marriage, make sure they were earnest attempts, and, as far as possible, try
to ensure that they were actually produced by the person signing off on them
rather than by some paid proxy.
Although these government employees might be called
“Readers,” I don’t mean that all the biographies would have to be written. Many
people just aren’t good with words. Many couldn’t sufficiently read or write,
and that’s OK. But a person could compose a song, get together a photo collage,
or make a movie video illustrating their partner’s history. There’s a baby
picture of Mary, segueing into a round-about video of the place where she was born and the first home she was brought to. There’s a picture of Michael
standing scrawny and abashed among the beefier members of his high school swim
team, segueing into a picture of the home gym his parents installed in their
basement and that still exists there, a fine scaffolding for cobwebs.
In the process of creating these biographies, people
might answer a lot of crucial questions about each other, questions that they
oddly enough had not already thought to ask. Had his parents been poor and
forced to lead a scrounging life, thereby making him all the more determined to
buy the best of everything as soon as he got a chance? Would he now be inclined
to want to make a triumphal, avenging display of wealth? Or alternatively, did that
early experience impress him with a similarly penny-pinching habit? Did she grow
up in a household of rowdy siblings, thereby leaving her determined to have a
nice, quiet, childless household? Or alternatively, will she want to replicate
the liveliness of that upbringing with a large brood of her own?
It’s amazing how often people enter into marriage without
any sense of where their partners stand on these basic issues. The resulting
disagreements can be the source of major rifts in marriages. But in the process
of producing a thorough, earnest biography of a prospective partner, many of
these fault lines can be detected early – and either reconciled, or result in wise
dis-engagement.
Then I would impose the same requirement at the other end
of marriage. Before a couple could be granted a divorce, I would require that
each partner produce an up-dated biography of the other. This would make the
people look at each other one last time. It would call for each partner to step
outside of himself or herself for a while, to step outside the immediate anger
and disappointment and consider the way the other person had come since the
start of the marriage. Once again, “Readers” or “Reviewers” could be employed
to try to insure as much as possible that honest attempts had been made to
consider the other person’s history and point of view before a divorce would be
granted.
There would be other benefits to requiring such
biographical attempts before any marital rite of passage. It would give young
people a reason to go more diligently about learning how to express themselves,
whether in schools or as autodidacts. It would give learners a concrete,
additional reason to master reading and writing, art and observation.
Rather than simply focusing on what kind of clothes they
might like to wear at their wedding ceremonies, boys and girls could also be
focused on how they might adequately prepare themselves to produce a biography
of their future mates. Rather than just preparing themselves to get jobs, earn
a living, and support a family, young people would realize they had the
additional obligation of developing some expressive talent – something that
would make them outward-looking, interesting and interested individuals. In the
same way that the knowledge that they might be drafted into defending their Country
once gave some boys an incentive to master certain skills – this projected
requirement attached to getting married might encourage young people to prepare
themselves in broader ways. It would give meaning and focus to their studies
and provide an answer to the perennial grumpy question, “Why do I have to learn
all this stuff about writing (or history, or grammar, or etc., etc.)?” The
requirement of producing a biography would give a relevance to acquiring such
understandings, and would encourage young people to develop some longer-range facility
at expressing themselves, rather than simply day-dreaming a brief expertise in
coordinating reception banners and bridesmaids’ dresses.
Again, people need not be aimed at producing Boswellian
biographies. Large vocabularies and a way with words just might not be the way
the minds of many individuals work. But almost everyone has some unique talent
in some medium, some way of crystallizing their observations. So whether the “biography”
they come up with is indeed a traditional Boswellian effort, or whether it’s a charm
bracelet or a photo album – as long as it’s earnest, individual, and considered,
it would qualify to grant them the marriage license, or, alas, the divorce
decree.
But in any case, all the attention would no longer be
compacted into the diamond presented at the altar. The requirement of a
biography would spread an individual’s attention more broadly into the whole
run of his or her life with another. It really would help accomplish what all
the television talk show hosts try to accomplish with just their closing words
of advice. It would encourage people to really look at their partners long-range,
and not just preoccupy themselves with the one day of spectacle. It would
encourage people to consider their marriages at large, and not just get tied
into knots over the minutiae of their weddings.
