Fairy Tale Weddings Can Have Unhappy Endings

Weddings have been on my mind because my daughter is getting married this year. As a result, everywhere I look, everyone seems similarly obsessed. On reality TV, courtship and marriage fuel dramas with "love" as the prize: "The Bachelorette," "90-Day Fiance," "Married at First Sight," "Bridezillas," "Say Yes to The Dress," etc. And I've noticed a couple of common trends. First of all, extravagant wedding trappings are being promoted at every turn, via magazines, Internet and TV--the huge engagement ring, the island destination venue, the designer gown and the lavish "fairy tale" event. Based on my experience, many young people are buying the wedding-industry hype, especially brides and grooms who are marrying later and who, as working couples, can afford to celebrate their unions in style. Another ubiquitous trend is to "write your own vows" rather than use traditional rites, putting the personal relationship at the heart of the ceremony. Yet the outward prosperity and romance of a wedding don't correlate with marital success. Just the opposite. A recent study found that the more a couple spends on their wedding, the higher their rate of divorce compared with the average! Theories include the stress of financial debts incurred and misguided reasons for marrying (wealth and outward appearance). But maybe fairy-tale wedding failures reflect a more basic marriage misconception. No matter how earnestly lovers pen their own vows or finish the night with fireworks, they are already on the wrong path if they think they are celebrating the start of a long-time love affair. As Joseph Campbell said about marriage across cultures in The Power of Myth: "Marriage is not a love affair....A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one. A love affair isn't that. That is a relationship of pleasure, and when it gets to be unpleasurable, it's off. But marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you are not married." It's obviously easier to go into debt for a big party than honor a life commitment for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. For sobering data about the link between wedding expense and divorce, see http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-larger-the-rock-the-rockier-the-marriage-2014-10-15

Strange Cultures Offer Common Mythic Truths

Recently, I read three books about worlds outside my cultural experience: The Round House by Louise Erdrich, a novel with a Native American cast of characters; King Peggy by Peggielene Bartels and Eleanor Herman, the story of an American secretary made "king"  in Ghana; and Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, describing the Chicano world of his childhood. It was sometimes a struggle to relate to the mythical devices in these books, from a female buffalo savior in The Round House, to stools imbued by spirits in King Peggy, to a giant gold carp-king in Bless Me, Ultima. The alien symbols and cultural assumptions initially seemed just dashes of authentic "color" and quaint folklore; it took effort to find the deeper spiritual meanings. It required abandoning the metaphors of a 21st century white American for the universal poetry of myth. Joseph Campbell, the famed mythologist, once likened myths to a kangaroo pouch for the human mind and spirit, a sort of "womb with a view." So how do you jump from your own cozy pouch into a strange one? It's not always a comfortable or easy leap. But I have found that the reward of a different view is worth it. “Mythology is composed by poets out of their insights and realizations. Mythologies are not invented; they are found....Myths come from the mystical region of essential experience,” Campbell wrote, and thus myth "goes past your mind and into your very being, into your very gut." When we can connect with that essential human experience--ignoring its setting in a strange place, its expression in a strange language and its conflict with our own accepted myths--we can learn something valuable about being human, about ourselves, which is the ultimate reward for a reader. For a quick introduction to Campbell on myth, see the interview http://www.context.org/iclib/ic12/campbell/