December 7, 2011

Maxim 20111207

Anyone unwilling to live with tension is unworthy of marriage.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

13 comments:

John-Julian, OJN said...

I've always enjoyed the definition: "Marriage is just something two people go through together."

Jon said...

Anyone unwilling to live with tension is unworthy of life.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG said...

Thanks to both for further thought... T.

Robert Brenchley said...

Not so much unworthy of marriage, as incapable of it.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG said...

Yes, Robert... that was my thought. Something best not attempted without a store of charity and a forgiving heart.

Erika Baker said...

Marriages do end, of course, sometimes when one partner cannot possibly tolerate what the other one believes to be of no major consequence to their spouse.

It is not wrong for those marriages to end.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG said...

True, Erika. Note that this maxim was really about the Anglican Covenant...

Jon said...

Tension is like stress, to much for to long breaks things while trying to entirely avoid it destroys one's health.

Erika Baker said...

Tobias,
I know. And if some Provinces genuinely cannot cope with what others do, although it doesn't affect them at all, then the Anglican marriage has to end, whether it does so by means of objecting Provinces leaving or innocent spouses being kicked out.

It would be a sad outcome but it could also be a liberating one.

Peter Schweitzer said...

There's a wonderful line in an old Paul Simon song that goes "So goodbye, goodbye. I'm gonna leave you now, and here's the reason why: I like to sleep with the window open, and you keep the window closed, so goodbye, goodbye, goodbye."

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG said...

Thanks, Peter. I'll add that to my marriage counseling kit!

Paul said...

Comments on marriage frequently remind me of this Ogden Nash poem. In graduate school, we performed this set to Anglican chant.

“We Don't Need to Leave Yet, Do We? Or, Yes We Do"

One kind of person when catching a train always wants to allow an hour to cover the ten-block trip to the terminus,
And the other kind looks at them as if they were verminous,
And the second kind says that five minutes is plenty and will even leave one minute over for buying the tickets,
And the first kind looks at them as if they had cerebral rickets.
One kind when theater-bound sups lightly at six and hastens off to the play,
And indeed I know one such person who is so such that it frequently arrives in time for the last act of the matinee,
And the other kind sits down at eight to a meal that is positively sumptuous,
Observing cynically that an eight-thirty curtain never rises till eight-forty, an observation which is less cynical than bumptious.
And what the first kind, sitting uncomfortably in the waiting room while the train is made up in the yards, can never understand,
Is the injustice of the second kind's reaching their scat just as the train moves out, just as they had planned,
And what the second kind cannot understand as they stumble over the first kind's heel just as the footlights flash on at last
Is that the first kind doesn't feel the least bit foolish at having entered the theater before the cast.
Oh, the first kind always wants to start now and the second kind always wants to tarry,
Which wouldn't make any difference, except that each other is what they always marry.”
― Ogden Nash

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG said...

Excellent, Paul. Nash is an underestimated treasure.