Ahlul Bayt (AS) News Agency - ABNA: The issue of marriage and navigating its consequences in today's world is no less daunting than Rostam's passage through the legendary Seven Labors, with the difference that not all young people possess Rostam's courage and strength to overcome these seven labors, nor have they fundamentally made such a decision.
Most of the lamentations, complaints, and outcries of young people, fathers, and mothers about the heaviness of the burden of marriage are related to these extraneous trappings. Otherwise, the essence and foundation of this matter are simpler, purer, and more sacred than to bring so much misery and trouble in its wake or aftermath.
For many today, marriage is like extracting gold from certain mines where it is so mixed with waste and foreign materials that extraction is not cost-effective and not worth the effort.
These foreign, wasteful additives to marriage are precisely the keeping up with the Joneses, illusory values, false customs and habits, fleeting whims, and the pursuit of false honor, status, and imaginary prestige.
Marriage, amidst this multitude of problems, has completely lost its original face and has turned into a "terrifying desert giant" that not everyone can shoulder the burden of.
Even worse is that few have the courage to fight against these trappings and waste materials; the educated in this regard are worse than the illiterate, and modern people are weaker and more incapable in this fight than the old-timers.
Many console themselves with this false reasoning: "After all, how many times in one's life does a person get married that they should conduct it so simply? Let us put our final wishes, whims, and inner desires into action!"
Unaware that when this false reasoning becomes widespread and epidemic, it becomes the greatest obstacle to the happiness and well-being of young people and even of those who use this reasoning.
Young people must, with their own heroism, like Rostam, pass through the seven labors of this long and arduous path and break these magical spells. If you are not surprised, this path too has seven labors, which are:
1. Unrealistic and dreamlike expectations: girls' expectations of boys, and boys' expectations of girls, and fathers' and mothers' expectations of both.
2. Unnecessary fault-finding by many fathers, mothers, relatives, family, friends, and acquaintances.
3. Heavy and crippling dowries.
4. Excessive formalities related to wedding ceremonies, a thousand kinds of "preliminaries" and "aftermaths," and deadly keeping up with the Joneses.
5. Objecting about the two families being of equal standing and equal status.
6. Fiery and uncontrollable yet uncalculated loves.
7. Excessive obsession and lack of trust and faith in each other's future fidelity.
When we reflect upon these seven problems, we see that most of them are not related to the essence of the marriage issue; rather, whatever there is is related to its margins and extras. (1)
Footnote:
(1) Compiled from the book: Sexual Problems of the Youth, Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, Nasle Javan Publishing, Qom, 2001 CE (1380 AH solar), p. 50.
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