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~ By Rainer
Maria Rilke ~
Marriage is in many ways a simplification of life, and it
naturally combines the strengths and wills of two young people so
that, together, they seem to reach farther into the future than
they did before. Above all, marriage is a new task and a new
seriousness, - a new demand on the strength and generosity of each
partner, and a great new danger for both.
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
their 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.
That is why this too must be the criterion for rejection or
choice: whether you are willing to stand guard over someone else's
solitude, and whether you are able to set this same person at the
gate of your own depths, which he learns of only through what
steps forth, in holiday clothing, out of the great darkness.
Life is self-transformation, and human relationships, which are an
extract of life, are the most changeable of all, they rise and
fall from minute to minute, and lovers are those for whom no
moment is like any another. People between whom nothing habitual
ever takes place, nothing that has already existed, but just what
is new, unexpected, unprecedented. There are such connections,
which must be a very great, an almost unbearable happiness, but
they can occur only between very rich beings, between those who
have become, each for his own sake, rich, calm, and concentrated;
only if two worlds are wide and deep and individual can they be
combined....
...For the more we are, the richer everything we experience is.
And those who want to have a deep love in their lives must collect
and save for it, and gather honey.
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