Life is for living not weddings

It might be too early for many parents to dream of wedding dresses for their millennial children. File picture: Cara Viereckl/Independent Media

It might be too early for many parents to dream of wedding dresses for their millennial children. File picture: Cara Viereckl/Independent Media

Published Feb 22, 2017

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Those who put pressure on young people to get married tend to ignore how easy it is to find love in a digital world, writes Kabelo Chabalala.

"You are getting old now. You must start looking for a wife. Your mom has to be a grandmother, she is not getting any younger and neither are you.”

The speech goes even further; “All you young people of today care about is your careers and your ambitions. There is more to life than building your careers, buying fast expensive cars, travelling and having fun.”

Granted.

Half of the things they are saying are not far from the truth.

If you are in your twenties, you come from a black family and you haven’t heard the speech or something similar, please let’s swap families. Clearly there is something your family is getting right.

I believe marriage is not an achievement but a blessing from God.

It is not something one has to chase after, male or female. I do not get persuaded by elders easily. But when this conversation was brought up again in the past weekend, I escalated their frustrations a bit.

It was disheartening and quite scary when I brought to their attention that most if not all of the people I know who got married in the past 10 years are either divorced, planning to separate or living miserably ever after.

So, I started telling them how those people’s lives have turned upside down, how they are having extramarital affairs and how unhappy they look.

I mean, you can try to fake it until you make it, but unhappiness cannot really be faked; being genuinely joyful is not something one can pretend to be for too long.

Part of the problem in our villages and country is how we turn something as sacred as marriage and make it so fashionable, so “today”, so “you got to be married or something is totally wrong with you”.

I agree with the elders to a larger extent. As millennials, we have found so much comfort in our careers, our ambitions and goals. We can manage the disappointments that come with those. But getting married to someone in this world today is too much of a risk, a risk we are not willing to take easily. We want purpose and a lifetime commitment that cannot be guaranteed.

The world today is very mercurial. Interests change, people change. We think love or being in love is cynical. This kind of cynicism is perpetuated by the high level of infidelity we read about in the newspaper. It is through seeing that even the most beautiful, filthy rich or most successful still get cheated on, still cheat and still do not respect this covenant called marriage. Those who want to do it right, never meet Mr or Miss Right. Such are the complexities of our world today.

Perhaps if we lived in yesteryears when our elders would find suitable partners for us, we would have a different approach. But that is too old school for a generation that is exposed to so much technology.

That does not work in a world where a few WhatsApp messages get me a date. It is different because a few DMs on Twitter are all it takes to start our love story. A few reactions and likes on Facebook send signals of interest. We are so inundated with easy ways to get "love". It is really no surprise we have less interest in tying the knot.

Chivalry is a thing of yesterday. The art of persuasion is a thing of the past. It's really easy come, ease go. Yet, we expect long-lasting marriages. Yet our elders expect us to run to not miss the marriage bus. I’d really rather miss it.

There are a lot of elements that really make me not thinking of tying the knot any time soon.

Black tax is our biggest enemy.

It would not be wise for me to get married and ignore my responsibilities to my siblings. One is in matric this year. Life is about to change for me and financially I need to contribute whatever little I can towards his varsity fees. The fees, like data, are not falling any time soon. That is the reality.

Committing to marriage and covering black tax won’t work for me at the moment. And marriage takes one away from one's family duties.

As blacks, especially those who come from poor families like me, we have the responsibility to ensure that our little sisters and cousins get better education to help uproot the poverty we grew up in.

So, the next time they ask you the question about marriage, please tell them that there is really more to life than getting married.

I believe that my twenties are a stage of self discovery, a phase to grow financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually and otherwise. This I would like to do without a significant other and if the one worth marrying without being pushed, without thinking of it, comes my way, I would make someone Mrs Chabalala.

Until then, elders, please take it easy on us. There is no hurry in South Africa.

*Chabalala is the founder of the Young Men Movement. @KabeloJay, email to [email protected]

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

The Star

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