Marriage

I've been thinking a lot about this subject lately...lots of questions to be answered and it seems like I'm the one holding the answers...

Here's what others have thought about marriage.

"When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods."
- Bill Cosby

"Marriage is like life - it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principles of equal partnership."
- Ann Landers

"In marriage do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before the body; then thou hast a wife, a friend, a companion, a second self."
- William Penn

"Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman."
- Joseph Joubert

"Marriage may be the closest thing to Heaven or Hell any of us will know on this earth."
- Edwin Louis Cole

"You were born together, and together you shall be forever more. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow."

- Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Storms Endured - Herman Hesse

Hay Quaker posted the first paragraph on his blog and it led me to read the rest on EarthMamaWeb. I think it's beautiful and so true.
...and very much what I need to read at the moment too...'funny' thing that, don't ya think? ;)



Here, an excerpt from “Wanderings” by Herman Hesse:

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the forces of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals it’s death wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk, in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought. I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labour is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts. Trees have long thoughts, long breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

© Herman Hesse.
From Wandering by Herman Hesse. Published by Picador. 1972.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be.


In my opinion he seems to have been quite a gloomy guy. Very insightful and gloomy but, perhaps one can't be a philosopher without a certain amount of gloom...? ;)

More Nietzsche:

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

"It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so violent, but rather the struggle of belief in opinions, that is, the struggle of convictions."

"One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes."

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."

...

I'm going through, experiencing, a bit of a rough spell at the moment and therefore most of the words that seem to "find me" right now are ones of heart ache, difficulites and sorrow...

Yep...that's where I'm at! ...or "worse" actually... I'm in heart ache limbo, sounds cheesy but feels true, not knowing where things are heading and confused as to what might follow...

Some words are quite dark and grim while others are perhaps more hopeful about lifes adversities - focusing on the nessecity of pain to be able to grow... I tend to go more towards those ones. Although, right here and now my spirit feels quite bruised and battered and my heart is unsure of what to do/feel...

"You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star."
- Friedrich Nietzsche


hoping to give birth to a dancing star...