Births, Marriages...

It seems at the moment I am seeing more and more people around me either getting pregnant, having a baby or they are getting married and in the place of babies they are getting litters of kittens instead. It's interesting once you find yourself in the age where quite a few of your peers are doing all of these grown up things.

Also stuff like buying a house, planning what to do with the rooms, finding a spouse...it's all part of that thing called 'Growing Up'. It also marks the start of the old biological clock ticking too...

Mine has perked up a little, although the thought of having a baby of my own makes me feel a mixture of excitement as well as pure, unadulterated fear.  Firstly I won't be getting pregnant and also it won't be until I am more settled in my career and know that I can provide well for it.  To be honest I think I am more fussed about marriage than I am a child.

The more weddings I attend the more I feel my own little internal clock ticking.  I will never be a conventional husband by any stretch of the imagination but since being a tiddler myself I have always wanted to get married. Perhaps growing up in a house where I knew I would never have that placed on me as an expectation has in turn made me want to do it one day. But for the right reasons.  I would have wanted to have been with the person a while and I would be doing it for love rather than seeing it as an administration purpose.

Underneath my exterior I am a bit of a romantic at heart, but that doesn't mean I would give someone a bunch of carnations or anything like that! I do find myself swept away by certain romantic virtues, yet at the same time I seem to have a healthy measure of cynicism to keep everything from turning into a Hallmark sponsored puke fest.

I attended a wedding at the weekend that was truly wonderful.  The couple were some old school friends of mine and it was nice to see everyone else too that I haven't seen in what felt like centuries! Also most people there were aware of some of the changes as to who I was and I didn't encounter any problems or too many awkward questions so that was nice.  Not that I would have been that bothered either as how I see it is that with a wedding it's about the couple and not really anyone else. Therefore politics and anything else should where possible be left alone wherever possible.

I found this great piece about marriage written by Rilke:

"The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky."

I really like this way of looking at marriage. 

Still I know I have more growing up to do before I think about such things, although in a few months I am to be 27, which to me means I have to ramp things up in terms of moving a few things along so that I am in the place I want to be by the time I am 30. As I learned last week, a lot can happen in a year as well as how fast a year can go. 3 years sounds like a long time but the things I want to do in that time shall mean it's all going to whizz by rather quickly.