It's amazing to see the enthusiasm of a new bride and groom. Their minds are full of imagination about the future. Probably, that also gives a sense of achievement, because most Bollywood movies portray marriage as the destination. The hero struggles throughout the movie just to get married, and the moment he marries his beloved, there is "The End". So, probably, there is childhood conditioning among boys and girls that marriage is "the destination". There is very little appreciation for movies like Ijajat, Masoom, and Drishti. They are discounted by the people as boring, while their "boring" concept may be the closest to life.
There is a phrase in the recruitment system, "catch them young". Identify potential employees early so their minds can be trained more effectively to align with the organisation's culture. Before a person develops independent thinking, organisations train their mind to align it with the organisation's objectives. Looks very good on the surface. It would be good if so many people worked like robots towards the organisation's growth. But, in the absence of independent thinking, will they ever be able to innovate? How will they think out of the box when their minds have been conditioned? In the long run, the organisation will definitely fail to innovate.
Isn't the same thing happening in society? No doubt, society needs marriages so that young children are born to parents who can help it progress. But the very fundamental purpose of society is to provide a safe space for individuals to explore. If society promotes the "marry them young" policy, it will be able to get the children from these marriages, but the fundamental purpose of facilitating individuals to explore life with freedom will somehow fail. Unless a person has explored the deepest layers of his own unconscious, some "basic instinct" will drive the decision to marry, and since in society, elders are too keen to just fulfil their responsibility of doing "vardaan" and "kanyadaan" for their children, this basic instinct will form a positive interference with the "sense of responsibility" of the elders.
The problem with the basic instincts is that they are just satisfiers. They may have great force and, as a result, compel a person to make decisions. However, when we fulfil these basic instincts, they do not make us feel fulfilled. The inner hollowness remains. We again mistake that inner hollowness and again form the hypothesis that some other satisfier will make us fulfilled, only to discover that it has not worked either. There is only one way that inner hollowness can be addressed, and that's by diving deep into that hollowness and seeing through it. That requires time. That requires leisure. However, we keep setting targets around satisfiers. 30 years to marry, have kids, and settle them; 20 years to set up a business and reach the top of it; 20 years to get a powerful political position. Where is time and space for that deep dive into hollowness? Society has built such strong narratives around these satisfiers that it is almost impossible for a child to avoid the trap of "Marry them young". It really feels bad to see so many well-educated, highly competent minds get trapped in routine tasks. I feel that the worst thing that can happen to us is living life at a minuscule percentage of our potential. I wish that at least a few understand this trap early enough to explore their higher potential and marry not for the sake of marriage, but because they want to live together and explore together. They marry after gaining clarity about what they want to explore in life.
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