Hello love, it’s all over

The divorce rate in the world today is disturbingly high. When a marriage breaks down, the woman is the one more severely hit.

What races through her mind is how does she cope as a single mother now having to single-handedly raise three children? The woman is the one more likely to blame for the break-up; there are side sneer remarks in the neighbourhood and in the circle of friends. Some look at her with pity. When she considers she is less marketable having been in a failed marriage her heart sinks. But the brave, confident one picks the pieces and forges ahead. For her, life must go on. For the less confident, the less self-assured, it is the setting in of gloom and unhappiness, hopelessness and depression as the inevitable harvest of a heavy heart and a disoriented mind.

Recently, there was this ugly spectacle of “If you Tarka me, I Daboh you.” There were sneer remarks made about a lady prominent in public glare on the number of times she had changed partners. And without restraint expected of a senior government functionary who is supposed to mirror public taste, refinement and values the society holds dear, the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godwin Akpabio suggested the lady, former managing director of NDDC should climb down from her high horse and see someone at Yaba or Aro in Abeokuta. My intervention is not to incite any woman to, at the least misunderstanding and for the most trivial of reasons, fling the ring at her husband, but to state that a woman’s standing is not diminished simply because she has changed partners and by so doing has become a candidate for a psychiatric hospital. We human beings are wont to form opinions or be judgmental out of ignorance and over matters we know very little. To please the society, many a respectable girl and woman are forced to live with a heavy heart in the false respectability of a marriage. Many see themselves as being in prison cages in which they suffer silently, afraid to get out and be free and happy fearing the society will brand them as failures and laugh at them.

The most sensational marital break-up within memory was that of the iconic freedom fighter, the general commanding in the battle for the emancipation and dignity of the Blackman, Nelson Mandela, and irrepressible worthy Winnie, also in the trenches all of the 27 years her husband was in jail. The second one was that of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1993. The collapse of the two marriages provided inexhaustible gossip materials and ammunition to scoffers. That of Nelson Mandela was like a thunderbolt and what was on the lips of everybody was: “Have you heard?” As I did explain at the time, the heat of the prison furnace, the harrowing experiences had polished the inner being, the spirit of Mandela such that he came out a different person and with the soul glowing had become a citizen of the universe, while Winnie was still bitter and hot. Where Winnie was seeing evil, Mandela was seeing goodness and the brotherhood of all men. Unbridgeable gaps had thus ensued and both could, therefore, no longer flow in the same heat waves.

The questions which the recent exchanges between our two public figures raise are: What is marriage? What is the origin of marriage? Is divorce wrong and how many times is separation in unions permitted?

We cannot easily understand marriage as a natural and, living concept unless we solve the riddle of why man and woman have always and will forever appeal to and desire each other; why every girl dreams of ending in the loving arms of a man, and a man seeking to bask in the aura of a worthy woman who will drive him out of his mind, to whom he would surrender as his teacher, guide and nurse. And companion. Adopting a holistic approach to life should help. What I am getting at is that the state of affairs pre-supposes the unity of, or rather man as a fruit of Nature. That is, one uniform law pervades and rules the universe. By this law, sodium and chlorine unite as if in wedlock, under certain circumstances, to form sodium chloride, our very familiar table salt. It is in the same vein that hydrogen and oxygen form water. Something is evident here. The uniting factors are of different nature. Science designates sodium factor as positive ions and chlorine aspect as negative ions; hydrogen as positive and oxygen as negative. In the end we find that what science demonstrates to us is that these are split parts of a species seeking union for fuller value of existence.

The question then predictably arises: By this thinking, can man and woman be split parts of a species seeking union for fuller value of existence? They, indeed, are. Time and space do not permit a contemplation of why and when the splitting into sexes occurred. However, it is pertinent to say this was a consequence of each person’s volition at some point in the course of our journey from Home Above to the school down here in the vale of matter, regarding our choice of activity in life upon unfolding from unconsciousness. In other words, a woman is a woman, and a man is a man by the nature of his or her activity. It is thus Nature that assigns roles to woman and roles to man. With the decision on choice of activity, masculine attributes can be envisaged withdrawing from the feminine inclined and vice-versa. Thus this leaves man or woman in an incomplete species conditions comparable to the split ions or radicals, and it is in union with the opposite gender that his or her activities in life become fulsome.

But this need be said immediately, as we are permitted to know through the unique knowledge available on earth today, that such unions are not necessarily achieved only in marriage, and there ought to be nothing to worry about over or mock if a marriage breaks down and each party has to go his or her own way. For in the wise ordering of the Creator, the Most High in His Omniscience, every person has not one but many complementary spouses to choose from. We should note the fundamental word: ‘Complementary.’ I will come back to the word presently. Suffice it to say that everyone wants to love and be loved. Many people being inexplicably driven by the power of love and in search of complementarity would want to get married even if they have been bruised and hurt many times over in this attempt. They would not give up.

Given the rate at which marriages collapse practically in every part of the globe, many spinsters and bachelors have been heard to openly ask: Is marriage really worth the trouble? Must a woman marry? If she does not marry, can she be fulfilled? Marriage can be a bed of roses, but such a union would be one made in Heaven, which simply means a marriage contracted on the basis of true and living laws of marriage. Many marriages in these times are not on the basis of life having a purpose, in which case marriage, being no accident, is expected to serve that purpose which is to make man or woman become of fuller value, with a richer inner and outer life. It is to afford each partner the opportunity to serve the other loyally and unconditionally in his or her pursuit of self-discovery or self-recognition which leads to a consciousness of life beyond self and the ultimate unfolding into a human being. In pursuit of this goal marriage strengthens when the partners are complementary. That means one person brings the union attributes the other lacks but requires for his or her completion. Thus, together, hand in hand, they face the world in their struggle, which life is, unafraid, and giving support one to the other in tempestuous times when merely looking into the other person’s eyes brings inexplicable streams of strength, confidence, joy and bliss. And the man feels like storming the world and overcoming it. He is ready to scale the walls and jump down. With the right woman by his side, his castle is an impenetrable fortress. He can face the lion. Such is the marriage that would have been made in Heaven because the foundation accords with the natural principles of marriage which themselves are derived from the principles of life.

In contrast, the prison cages which the scoffers deride are not based on these principles. It is not surprising because many people marry for all sorts of bizarre reasons and expectations. Many a young man may be overwhelmed by the sheer physical beauty, which soon withers. The endowed woman herself does not know that the purpose of her charms is not to seduce, but to hold man and turn his gaze to On High which is primarily the purpose of her life on earth—to ennoble and standing aright, be a channel for Light power to stream into the land and disperse darkness for the wellbeing, joy and happiness of all in the household and the community at large. Another man may want a wife whose intellect he parades before the world. A woman who wishes to be free from material cares goes for the man of means who can make her comfortable and free of want. The husband of another unable to or may not seek in her a companion of equal worth but a housekeeper. Yet another may want some woman of low virtue with whom he can indulge in unrestrained physical surrender under the supposed canopy of respectability which he and the lady assume any marriage affords. Yet there are women who hop into marriage because of peer pressure or because everyone is getting married, or because they are tired of home and would like to have a place they can call their own and where they are queens. Other ladies go into marriage to spite a fellow lady or man.

Marriages based on such considerations are no doubt bound to crack with time under the weight of their own fakery. For, being falsities, they are subject to the natural compulsion which triggers the collapse. There are also marriages which arise from karmic ties. The marriages dissolve as soon as those ties are severed, when the circle of what knotted them are closed. All kind of activities can bring about the ties such as unworthy familiarity, calling acquaintances or colleagues by their first names. In some cultures, in the South West for example, brothers of husbands are to be addressed as “my husband” and the brothers are to individually address the woman as ‘my wife”, “my dear” etc. Through the power of the word, according to the higher knowledge mediated to us mankind today, ties are knotted and ethereal thought forms corresponding to the nature of the volition shape themselves under the pressure of the power of the word. The forms soon press for materialization at some time in the future. That future of a thousand years ago may have arrived today. The past as our today’s living reality! Consequently, many a couple find themselves in marriages they do not understand, unions which they cannot explain how they have landed in, and yet are unable to part ways. Therefore, we cannot mock anyone whose marriage has collapsed. Jeering at her aimed at making her to lose her pride and self-esteem is not only cruel, but has unimaginable consequences.

Next week: The place of woman in a man’s life and her tasks in life.