Any god worth knowing would reply: ' No -- God blesses you, OldTimeRadio, for the kind, meek, gentle and sensitive are going to inherit the earth, once I've rid it of the Bonobos'.
Hope the virgin gnome lived happily ever after, once her low-key biological clock gave up and sank. After all, it makes sense that you don't miss what you don't know.
There must be (and must always have been) those who -- for lack of opportunity --- never became entangled in personal relationships and lived their lives free of the problems (and yes, sometimes joys) introduced when we surrender our independence. There was a song years ago that went: ' Got along without you before I met you, gonna get along without you now ~~~~ '.
We get along just fine, on our own, until we become embroiled in that first love-affair. Regardless of whether that relationship ends or endures; we're never the same afterwards. Having tasted romance, we're hooked, usually --- similar to drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, chocolate, internet. Having once relinquished (to another and to a 'relationship') that sense of completeness of self, we feel 'in half', 'missing a piece', lonely and dissatisfied with our own company when we're not involved with someone ... and so move into one relationship or hoped-for relationship after another, just for the sake of it in many instances, because we now no longer feel alive (or valid) unless we're attached to someone else.
I don't imagine I'm the only person who's asked themselves: What if ...?' What if I'd never Fallen in Love' ... what if I'd instead moved through life as Myself; the Myself I was for the first (say) 18 years of my life? What if I'd never joined the hand-holders, the joined-at-the-hip crew-even-when-they're-both-secretly-always-on-the-lookout-for-Someone Better ? Most, at some point in their lives, surely ask themselves: What if I'd kept myself within the boundaries of Self, instead of allowing those boundaries to dissolve and merge with one, then several others -- thus losing valuable bits of Me at the same time I absorbed bits of Them (which doesn't always turn out to the pleasure it seemed at the outset).
And most must ask themselves, at some point in time: What would i have become and done and achieved, had I remained On My Own; in which ways would I have grown and learned, had I not spent most of my energy between 16 and 60 in relationships; in gritting my teeth and smiling on the outside; in putting up with a person (several in succession & their friends and families) whom I didn't really like all that much but learned to tolerate; in paying mortgages on properties in order those relationships and the children they produced, would continue in relative comfort; in remaining in jobs I hated in order I could pay the mortgage etc. ???
~~ Got along without you before I met you, gonna get along without you now ~~~~
People claim: ' Oh, that's stupid. We're meant to fall in love and get married and have children; that's only natural; anyone who doesn't is weird and will end up lonely in their old age'. But most end up alone in their old age anyway and more than a few wish they
could be alone instead of being crowded in by children and grandchildren and the inevitable problems and resultant, endless demands on their time and resources. ' Get to buggery !' they'd like to cry out, ' Leave me alone and give me time to think ! '. For they want to work it out; work out where they took that turning which led them away from themselves and what
they had once wanted ... and into the maze of Love and Despair and Compromise and sometimes Hate and Loathing ----- and finally, Resignation. ' What led me,
took me, from that bright, idealistic, energetic, independent young boy/girl I was and brought me to this?' they ask. And the answer is; romantic relationships; lurve and all it entails.
I used to work in an area that put me in daily contact with senior-aged people and I discovered that what my mother had told me was true, by and large; that no-one wants an old woman unless she has money -- yet old men (no matter how decrepit, broke and unlikeable) usually manage to find some old-dear willing to look after them. She also claimed that the happiest, most contented people -- all through life -- are single, childless women; spinsters as they used to be called. I daily spoke with many of the latter and they certainly had their wits about them in a way unmatched by those (now grandmothers and great-grandmothers) who'd married and had families. The unmarried elderly women were serene, intelligent and independent of mind. They had outlived by ten or more years in many instances, their married sisters and friends. They didn't seem to believe they had 'missed' a thing. They had been Themselves, all through life, instead of being fragmented into dozens of roles for the sake of others.
I've known several batchelors well, too, and they also seem to have a far greater sense of togetherness, independence, intelligence, energy (mental and physical), composure and contentment; they have a certain crispness; their edges are defined and whole; they are Themselves; complete within themselves. The batchelor might decide to travel up the Sepik on his holidays -- the married father instead has to re-tile the bathroom in between taking children he doesn't particularly like (if he's honest) to Kid-World.
' You're selfish ! ' my heavily pregnant sister screamed at me at the same time her two toddlers pulled each other's hair on the other side of the room. Selfish, she meant, for being single and childless at age 27, when the truth was, she was jealous of my status and would have given everything she possessed -- yes, even the supposed fulfilment and pleasure of parenthood -- to be in my shoes. Failing that, she wanted to coerce and emotionally blackmail me into hers. Misery loves company.
In between typing this, I've scrubbed one bathroom and washed and hung a large load of family washing ... and there's another bathroom and load of washing waiting to be done. Fulfilling? Sure, washing other people's underwear, sheets, towels, etc. and scrubbing other people's rancid body fat (known politely as 'soap scum') from glass and tiles
might be fulfilling in a sense if it were the
only load of washing and bathrooms I would ever do; a Masterpiece --- my Domestic Cistine Chapel But it's probably the ten-thousandth time I've done it. Would Leonardo have re-painted that ceiling over and over again with the same divine inspiration and suffering for his art? Not bloody likely -- he would have tossed himself from the scaffold and happily smashed himself to bits on the stone floor below, after the first half dozen times.
Weeds reproduce, as do ants and mushrooms and piggies and grass and body-lice. There's nothing creative about it; it's just reproduction. Ninety plus percent of the world's population is walking around today because at some point earlier, two other people's groins got sufficiently close enough to each other --- no matter how briefly, unenthusiastically, drunkenly, tiredly, lovingly or lovelessly --- for a dob of sperm to find the mark. Most of those couples were not thrilled -- a few weeks later -- to discover their humdrum (and in many cases forgotten) moments of physical closeness had fated one or both of them to spend the next twenty or so years responsible for the wellbeing of another person/child. In many instances, this knowledge propels the couple into marriage, or prevents them now from leaving the one they're in. Twenty or so years later, their child will likely be in his/her parents' position, and so on.
Ego and stubborness in many instances, results in parents' claiming they found/find 'fulfilment' in parenthood and marriage. Making-the-best-of and putting-a-good-face on things is what it really comes down to in most cases; after all, most people aren't even going to do much of a job painting the living-room walls, let alone a Cistine Chapel. Their lives are basically pointless and of no value to them or anyone else anyway, apart from retailers, so in such a wasteland(which in fact is teeming with other opportunities for those brave enough to grasp them) parenthood at least provides them a sense of structure, purpose and pride. 'How's your Johnny these days?'. 'Oh, he's doing well. He's married now you know and has three children.' For some reason, it's regarded as an achievement, in the same way people imagine they've established themselves as worthwhile and validated their existence via the fact they're grandparents, when all it means is; their children have ground groins and reproduced, just as they did themselves when younger (and as many generations of the family pets have also done). Big Business and organised religion encourages this sort of thinking. It means new consumers will replace those who've died and provides fresh cannon-fodder for the next War for Profit.
Anyway, blessed be the virgin-gnomes. They live without imposing life on others. They live within their own life. They stand and fall as they are, instead of using others as an excuse for their failures or blaming others for failing to live up to their own expectations. They live as they began and leave life as they entered it. It has a purity and honesty about it; a lightness & integrity. No wonder it was the goal of the spiritually enlightened -- later claimed as the ideal state of being by organised religions. Notice how the zionists have endeavoured to tarnish the image of Christ by insisting he was married with a family; therefore 'ordinary', 'less', less worthy of trust, adoration, respect ?
Oh well, off to hang out more washing.
