A Marriage Proposal
Years went by, much the same as the rest, until, one day, the younger received word that the elder's wife had died. He felt a dust-mite of sorrow, but that was quickly replaced by a tick of high-minded absolution for the elder. The elder, in the eyes of the younger, had wasted the bulk of his life on a blind notion--the stubborn idea that his wife and marriage were truly worth all of that time and energy, only to see them both die. He laughed to himself and almost reveled in the thought that the elder was coming to this same realization.
On the day, after the elder's quiet eulogy, sunny rain cried over the floating casket as it was lowered.
"You deftly captured your feelings for the wife, my old friend," offered the younger, in the brightest corner of the mortuary.
The elder was too broken to be corrective. "That is appreciated," he said, almost to the floor.
The silence in the air felt like it was looking for the nearest exit.
Suddenly, energy long lost had entered the elder's cheeks and radiated to his elbows. With a slight laugh, he began, "I suppose you never figured it out, our discussion from years ago."
The younger feigned like it hadn't been the very reason he was there. "And which of the multiple discussions would that be?" he replied in kind with laughter, but padded by pretense.
"You know," said the elder, "I've hoped you would find some level of happiness in your life. I've hoped from the moment you walked in through the doors that you would navigate through the halls to fulfillment, whether it was through academia, achievement, or even recreation. But, I can see now that I've failed to offer you enough guidance when I've had the opportunity. So, accept this as penance for that mistake." He motioned for the younger to sit opposite him, the teeth of the sun cutting through stained glass and onto their backs.
"There isn't anything you can offer me with words only, sir." the younger's subtlety had soaked into the cushion as he sat down. "My time is worth more than words. I'm here as a courtesy to you for your considerable loss." His tone was urgent, because his thoughts had already left the room. "And you've been under contract with the one woman twice as many years married as you were single. You can't have insight into the mind of a highly successful bachelor."
"Hm." The elder paused to soothe an aching flame. "I suppose you think I had surrendered too soon. Perhaps you even think I'm a coward...maybe you think I settled. That I committed to what was convenient, at the expense of an eager woman's heart."
This placated the younger, and he smiled. "Well! Is this a confession, my old friend?" He finally felt a firm connection with the old man, one he never felt in their history.
So many years had passed since they last met that all the elder's thoughts came out dry and infertile. "I chose, from my vows at the altar, to be happy in my marriage. To be sure, though, I admit there were many women I would think others might find far more attractive than my wife. There were other women who were more skilled and experienced. There were women who shared more of my interests. There were women who were more talented and capable. There were even women with whom I felt a slightly stronger connection--I admit, even in whom I felt a slightly stronger interest--than I did with my wife at that time," he shifted in his seat and his words leaned like a spilling whisper, "However, I chose her. Every day, I chose my wife over every woman. She chose me, as well, and, therefore, she was mine. That's why I was happy." His eyes softly brightened and the corners of his mouth lifted like a flower in the late morning.
The outside heat was now pressing its ears against the window, as it sensed burning irritation well up from the other side. "Are you telling me, sir," began the younger, "that you had... ...convinced yourself you were happy? All of these years, I've been hearing your voice in my head, and..." After an empty moment, his voice became reduced and severe. "It's disappointing to think you, someone whom I have respected and sought to impress... ...and all the wisdom you have is simply that you gave up and stopped looking for something better, even when it was right in front of you. You could have had an actual life, you stubborn old man!" The younger gathered his emotions to stop other people from listening. "This... ...as the highly successful and wealthy man I am, I don't seek the approval of others. I am too well-respected to be vulnerable, and yet there has always been this thin crack in my conscience because of you. But, here at last, it turns out, that you are nothing..." incredulity shook his jaw, "but a simple fool." He set his hips deeply into the chair and leaned forward. "Since I was wrong about you, and apparently don't know you, please, tell me--have you always been without self-respect, or did you give it up to your... ...plain betrothed?" Thick heat was welling underneath the darkened rock of his stare.
The dynamics between these two was so, that, even at the younger's most impassioned, contentious speech, the elder was able to treat it as academic, and that allowed the elder to relax the tension, at every turn. This time was different, though. This time, when he kept his composure, it was out of pity.
"A man with so much experience out in the world, yet you know so little, my dear friend." There was dust caught floating in the light of his words. "You're still very focused on the present and the material. Ultimately, your values are contingent upon what you can extract from them. You've confused this with perspective." He moved to one side, and paused to prepare what to say next.
"Please," the younger cut in, "I'm well above that insight. I always knew I was, now you've proven it for yourself. This conversation is turning stale." His ire nudged him to get up and go, but he would settle for nothing less than the old man grovelling on one shaking knee before he left.
The elder's emotions were shallow and sore. His mind was too weak and distant to keep its grip on the topic. He could feel it in the nerves of his neck that everything he'd offered was less out of insight and more out of intellectual fatigue. His humanity was losing its flavor, like a paired stone-fruit dropped in vinegar.
The younger, therefore, was not convinced of anything and stood his ground, conversationally. "Admit it. Finally admit your so-called happiness was the result of an unhealthy delusion. I'm sorry for your loss, but please consider that you're free, now. You've been living a coward's life. This is a blessing, if you open your eyes to see it, and it's not too late to live--actually live--what's left of your life."
The elder gently closed his eyes for centuries of a moment, and opened them after leaving the wiry forest of his tangled thoughts. "My life has been full, my dear friend. Your life is empty because it has been entirely your own, and that is surrender. You are missing introspection, because you've never had the courage to let good advice wash over your ego. And, because of that, you have no depth."
The younger breathed a cynical laugh. He felt the bitter twinge of one who's trapped on a park bench during a street sermon. "Old man, you're not listening." he started.
"It's true! Your argument of missing out on life is blind. You have never seen that you stubbornly hop on one foot when you can walk as one of a pair. Can you not go farther with two feet than if you were to shuffle forward with one?"
The younger thought, Let the old man have this one, he has nothing left to lose.
"That is something I had tried to show you for many years, only to be met by your self-obsessed opposition. You have always placed more value on the eventual absence of something than its presence." The elder was making strides more effortlessly, now. "What you have--be it opulence or accolades--is valued by what it can be traded for, is it not? Your partnerships have all been made for what could be extracted from the collaboration than what could be created from the unity. You think it's trite, I know. I know you. You think it's pedantic for me to explain this to you. My aim is not to be corrective or instructive. Our tenure in that capacity has long been expired. However, since you still don't understand how I have been happy for longer than you've been alive, my aim is to tell you, and lay to rest, that my wife and my marriage are... ...were my happiness. Nothing else in my memory will ever make me happier than the life I had with her. Nothing from this point on will make me as happy. She is still a part of me, though, and she has made me better for being a part of my life for so long."
The younger could only hear bitter pride in those words. "Better in what way? You have been living on a plateau. You never reached the heights you were meant to. You've never accomplished anything. Your analogy is flawed: the 'two feet versus one' argument is negated by the fact that you haven't gone anywhere. Your wife, your entire marriage, has done nothing but ground you and stop your ability to live your own life, like I have. I've traveled all over, I've experienced pleasure that can't be imagined, I've seen many cultures and customs, I've met thousands and have stood in front of tens of thousands--even hundreds of thousands--of people, and I've closely associated with very prominent and world-famous figures. I'm a celebrity in my field, old man. What are you but a wasted life? You've done nothing that compares to what I've done with another person at your side, except be weighed down with needs and wants that you wouldn't be obligated to fulfill if you hadn't ever surrendered your life to them."
"Dear friend," the elder raked with the words like sifting over soil for the last few weeds, "The greatest tragedy you face, because of that, is that your legacy will be forgotten. You only have what you have because of the attention it gives you. Someone who begs for more will make enough noise to replace you. What will you have left? The memories you have will turn sour. And what of the pleasures you've felt? Are you feeling them, now?" He paused for retort, but the younger was suddenly speechless.
After silence stayed a half-second too long, the younger chimed, "You're reaching and it's getting low and petty, old man."
"Perhaps. Or, is this the truth, and you've always thought you were above it, and too important to hear it?" The elder felt some momentum sway in his favor. "When you are dead, you'll be sent off, like everyone. But by whom? My wife--because we love her, more than the world, itself--will live on in the memory of her family, through generation after generation. Whom do you expect will remember you? Colleagues? Rivals? Mistresses? They care as much about you as you care about them." Now, it was time to put away the rusted utensils of their relationship, and end it. "I planted a seed and nurtured it to bear fruit, and it is delicious and full. You, and your associates, live planting seed to seed, only to leave them neglected and dead. You won't see that your life is barren until you are old and starving for affection and permanence. I will die, soon, and with me, so will my love for you, my dear man. I won't be there to console you and finally send you off." The last words the younger would ever hear from the elder almost felt quieted by distance. "Find someone to help you along. Don't be lost forever in yourself. Don't take your memory with you into the ground. Live alongside people, not against them" Tears where they might have been were spent earlier that day, leaving the farewell without petrichor. "I have given all that I have to offer, my dear friend. This is goodbye. Take care."
The younger could sense the elder was too tired to carry on, closing the window for a rebuttal. He thought himself too refined to leave the man without dignity, so, he nodded into a deep breath, and with a word of parting, he stood up and walked out of the dimming light from the once bright corner. On his way to the door, he turned around, and looked quickly toward the elder to say something as a final word. But, the elder was distracted, looking out the window toward a freshly covered grave.
On the day, after the elder's quiet eulogy, sunny rain cried over the floating casket as it was lowered.
"You deftly captured your feelings for the wife, my old friend," offered the younger, in the brightest corner of the mortuary.
The elder was too broken to be corrective. "That is appreciated," he said, almost to the floor.
The silence in the air felt like it was looking for the nearest exit.
Suddenly, energy long lost had entered the elder's cheeks and radiated to his elbows. With a slight laugh, he began, "I suppose you never figured it out, our discussion from years ago."
The younger feigned like it hadn't been the very reason he was there. "And which of the multiple discussions would that be?" he replied in kind with laughter, but padded by pretense.
"You know," said the elder, "I've hoped you would find some level of happiness in your life. I've hoped from the moment you walked in through the doors that you would navigate through the halls to fulfillment, whether it was through academia, achievement, or even recreation. But, I can see now that I've failed to offer you enough guidance when I've had the opportunity. So, accept this as penance for that mistake." He motioned for the younger to sit opposite him, the teeth of the sun cutting through stained glass and onto their backs.
"There isn't anything you can offer me with words only, sir." the younger's subtlety had soaked into the cushion as he sat down. "My time is worth more than words. I'm here as a courtesy to you for your considerable loss." His tone was urgent, because his thoughts had already left the room. "And you've been under contract with the one woman twice as many years married as you were single. You can't have insight into the mind of a highly successful bachelor."
"Hm." The elder paused to soothe an aching flame. "I suppose you think I had surrendered too soon. Perhaps you even think I'm a coward...maybe you think I settled. That I committed to what was convenient, at the expense of an eager woman's heart."
This placated the younger, and he smiled. "Well! Is this a confession, my old friend?" He finally felt a firm connection with the old man, one he never felt in their history.
So many years had passed since they last met that all the elder's thoughts came out dry and infertile. "I chose, from my vows at the altar, to be happy in my marriage. To be sure, though, I admit there were many women I would think others might find far more attractive than my wife. There were other women who were more skilled and experienced. There were women who shared more of my interests. There were women who were more talented and capable. There were even women with whom I felt a slightly stronger connection--I admit, even in whom I felt a slightly stronger interest--than I did with my wife at that time," he shifted in his seat and his words leaned like a spilling whisper, "However, I chose her. Every day, I chose my wife over every woman. She chose me, as well, and, therefore, she was mine. That's why I was happy." His eyes softly brightened and the corners of his mouth lifted like a flower in the late morning.
The outside heat was now pressing its ears against the window, as it sensed burning irritation well up from the other side. "Are you telling me, sir," began the younger, "that you had... ...convinced yourself you were happy? All of these years, I've been hearing your voice in my head, and..." After an empty moment, his voice became reduced and severe. "It's disappointing to think you, someone whom I have respected and sought to impress... ...and all the wisdom you have is simply that you gave up and stopped looking for something better, even when it was right in front of you. You could have had an actual life, you stubborn old man!" The younger gathered his emotions to stop other people from listening. "This... ...as the highly successful and wealthy man I am, I don't seek the approval of others. I am too well-respected to be vulnerable, and yet there has always been this thin crack in my conscience because of you. But, here at last, it turns out, that you are nothing..." incredulity shook his jaw, "but a simple fool." He set his hips deeply into the chair and leaned forward. "Since I was wrong about you, and apparently don't know you, please, tell me--have you always been without self-respect, or did you give it up to your... ...plain betrothed?" Thick heat was welling underneath the darkened rock of his stare.
The dynamics between these two was so, that, even at the younger's most impassioned, contentious speech, the elder was able to treat it as academic, and that allowed the elder to relax the tension, at every turn. This time was different, though. This time, when he kept his composure, it was out of pity.
"A man with so much experience out in the world, yet you know so little, my dear friend." There was dust caught floating in the light of his words. "You're still very focused on the present and the material. Ultimately, your values are contingent upon what you can extract from them. You've confused this with perspective." He moved to one side, and paused to prepare what to say next.
"Please," the younger cut in, "I'm well above that insight. I always knew I was, now you've proven it for yourself. This conversation is turning stale." His ire nudged him to get up and go, but he would settle for nothing less than the old man grovelling on one shaking knee before he left.
The elder's emotions were shallow and sore. His mind was too weak and distant to keep its grip on the topic. He could feel it in the nerves of his neck that everything he'd offered was less out of insight and more out of intellectual fatigue. His humanity was losing its flavor, like a paired stone-fruit dropped in vinegar.
The younger, therefore, was not convinced of anything and stood his ground, conversationally. "Admit it. Finally admit your so-called happiness was the result of an unhealthy delusion. I'm sorry for your loss, but please consider that you're free, now. You've been living a coward's life. This is a blessing, if you open your eyes to see it, and it's not too late to live--actually live--what's left of your life."
The elder gently closed his eyes for centuries of a moment, and opened them after leaving the wiry forest of his tangled thoughts. "My life has been full, my dear friend. Your life is empty because it has been entirely your own, and that is surrender. You are missing introspection, because you've never had the courage to let good advice wash over your ego. And, because of that, you have no depth."
The younger breathed a cynical laugh. He felt the bitter twinge of one who's trapped on a park bench during a street sermon. "Old man, you're not listening." he started.
"It's true! Your argument of missing out on life is blind. You have never seen that you stubbornly hop on one foot when you can walk as one of a pair. Can you not go farther with two feet than if you were to shuffle forward with one?"
The younger thought, Let the old man have this one, he has nothing left to lose.
"That is something I had tried to show you for many years, only to be met by your self-obsessed opposition. You have always placed more value on the eventual absence of something than its presence." The elder was making strides more effortlessly, now. "What you have--be it opulence or accolades--is valued by what it can be traded for, is it not? Your partnerships have all been made for what could be extracted from the collaboration than what could be created from the unity. You think it's trite, I know. I know you. You think it's pedantic for me to explain this to you. My aim is not to be corrective or instructive. Our tenure in that capacity has long been expired. However, since you still don't understand how I have been happy for longer than you've been alive, my aim is to tell you, and lay to rest, that my wife and my marriage are... ...were my happiness. Nothing else in my memory will ever make me happier than the life I had with her. Nothing from this point on will make me as happy. She is still a part of me, though, and she has made me better for being a part of my life for so long."
The younger could only hear bitter pride in those words. "Better in what way? You have been living on a plateau. You never reached the heights you were meant to. You've never accomplished anything. Your analogy is flawed: the 'two feet versus one' argument is negated by the fact that you haven't gone anywhere. Your wife, your entire marriage, has done nothing but ground you and stop your ability to live your own life, like I have. I've traveled all over, I've experienced pleasure that can't be imagined, I've seen many cultures and customs, I've met thousands and have stood in front of tens of thousands--even hundreds of thousands--of people, and I've closely associated with very prominent and world-famous figures. I'm a celebrity in my field, old man. What are you but a wasted life? You've done nothing that compares to what I've done with another person at your side, except be weighed down with needs and wants that you wouldn't be obligated to fulfill if you hadn't ever surrendered your life to them."
"Dear friend," the elder raked with the words like sifting over soil for the last few weeds, "The greatest tragedy you face, because of that, is that your legacy will be forgotten. You only have what you have because of the attention it gives you. Someone who begs for more will make enough noise to replace you. What will you have left? The memories you have will turn sour. And what of the pleasures you've felt? Are you feeling them, now?" He paused for retort, but the younger was suddenly speechless.
After silence stayed a half-second too long, the younger chimed, "You're reaching and it's getting low and petty, old man."
"Perhaps. Or, is this the truth, and you've always thought you were above it, and too important to hear it?" The elder felt some momentum sway in his favor. "When you are dead, you'll be sent off, like everyone. But by whom? My wife--because we love her, more than the world, itself--will live on in the memory of her family, through generation after generation. Whom do you expect will remember you? Colleagues? Rivals? Mistresses? They care as much about you as you care about them." Now, it was time to put away the rusted utensils of their relationship, and end it. "I planted a seed and nurtured it to bear fruit, and it is delicious and full. You, and your associates, live planting seed to seed, only to leave them neglected and dead. You won't see that your life is barren until you are old and starving for affection and permanence. I will die, soon, and with me, so will my love for you, my dear man. I won't be there to console you and finally send you off." The last words the younger would ever hear from the elder almost felt quieted by distance. "Find someone to help you along. Don't be lost forever in yourself. Don't take your memory with you into the ground. Live alongside people, not against them" Tears where they might have been were spent earlier that day, leaving the farewell without petrichor. "I have given all that I have to offer, my dear friend. This is goodbye. Take care."
The younger could sense the elder was too tired to carry on, closing the window for a rebuttal. He thought himself too refined to leave the man without dignity, so, he nodded into a deep breath, and with a word of parting, he stood up and walked out of the dimming light from the once bright corner. On his way to the door, he turned around, and looked quickly toward the elder to say something as a final word. But, the elder was distracted, looking out the window toward a freshly covered grave.
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