The Unbearable Rightness Of Marrying
Kelvin Ha
Some months ago, I married my best friend. Ever since I first sent out my
invitations, almost everyone I know has asked me why I would want to venture on
such a momentous undertaking at such a young age. But I've always wondered why
they think that twenty five years is too early an age to get married. I usually
tell them something very sexist like, you know you should marry a woman when you
still want to sleep with her even though she's nagged at you the whole day, in
order to put them off the question because whenever I reply that I don't think
I'm too young to get married, relatives and friends have always looked at me
with incredulity and asked "But what about your career?" This has always left
me dumbfounded.
The right age for marriage has always been a very subjective matter, and in this society we live in, people are increasingly putting off tying the knot till their late twenties or early thirties. In the interim, most people concentrate on building their careers and furthering themselves. This way, when they get married, they already have a solid base and foundation from which to start from because all the things and titles which they need for a comfortable middle class life would already be in place. Therefore, when my peers heard that I was getting married straight out of school, they were probably astounded that I would want to jump into a marriage without even establishing a career first. Or maybe they were surprised that a woman would want to marry me, a person who has no career of which to speak of at the time. Either way, I think they're all missing the point.
In my opinion, the basis for two persons being together has to be the fact that they get along extremely well and care for one another to the point that they would be lost without the other. Being together when you are in school is easy. Classes take up only eight to twelve hours a week, leaving you the rest of the one hundred and fifty- six hours to spend with each other. Once you leave school, work takes up all of your time, and finding time to meet during the week gets more and more difficult because you find it increasingly hard to find the energy to do anything after a hard day at work. So from spending one hundred and fifty-six hours together, you find that you end up seeing each other for about less than forty-eight hours a week. If one were to wait till one has a solid or brilliant career first before getting married, that forty-eight hours would slowly dwindle to forty, and then to thirty and then eventually to two hours a week. And in the mean time, you’re missing the best friend you ever had. So why wait? Might as well marry her and keep her by your side just like the way it used to be. After all, if one were to wait till one's career is established, that could take forever. And, really, what is there to wait for? In my case, I had already got what I set out to get, mainly a university education which has been more successful than I ever imagined.
"But what about the house, the car, the bills . . ." the questions still fly. Well, nobody said life was easy. But in marrying my best friend, we get to face the difficulties and the hunger together, and that will make the days when we don’t even have a cent easier to bear. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we can benefit from a joint income. What I’m referring to is that in times of adversity, it is always important to have someone to rely on for support so that the lean hard times can pass faster. If they don’t, then at least one would have the hungry years to remember.
Anyway, for the time being it’s fun to have someone waiting up for me when I come back late. And what’s more, I don’t have to send her home anymore every night even though I'm too tired and sleepy to even walk straight. More importantly, I don’t have to even call her up on the phone. All I have to do is turn around and I can see her. Ahh!!! The convenience of marriage!
