June 21

I’ve never been a big believer in destiny or fate. You know, the silly explanations people chalk up and use to excuse all the work and coincidence and magic of life. But it caught me off guard when one of the girls on the trip already had me pegged for it. While her words, “I know you aren’t into anything institutionalized…” seemed a little extreme to me, she clarified to mean “things like marriage,” to which I could do nothing but agree. I had a surprisingly interesting conversation with a friend on the trip the night we saw local Irish music at The Pavillion. The night was wonderfully entertaining. We got dinner downtown, shared ebony Irish coffees and split pints of frothy Hoegaarden until the show was ready to start. Before the lights dimmed in the upstairs venue and the circle tables of people were still chattering to keep busy, Matt and I started discussing movies. See, I am in the film class and he is in the travel writing class while in Ireland, but he is the one that likes movies and most of my experience is with nonfiction writing (although I’ve never spent concentrated specifically on travel writing). I spewed my gripes about the sensationalism and commercialism and blatant disregard for an intelligent audience in American movies, and how I find it mind-numbing. Matt agreed, but pointed out that most people want that in a two-hour movie, which I couldn’t really disagree with. But somehow the conversation got turned to the issue of “love.” Personally, I think love, like a million other social practices, is nothing more than a cultural construction. While I absolutely believe in the challenge, the inspiration, the encouragement, the learning, and the loving that comes when you connect emotionally and intellectually with someone, I am convinced that “love,” as a western idea, has been confused with “romance” and tends to leave a very narrow window of what is acceptable and “good.” The institution of marriage for example, is extremely culture specific. But for some reason, many people believe this is only one acceptable way to express a healthy, loving relationship. Or that, marriage is the ultimate loving relationship, and it is up to us to find the find person that fulfills this for us, before it’s too late.

Other cultures see it differently. India, for example, has a long history of practicing arranged marriages. While it probably stemmed out of some sort of necessity because of their equally long-standing caste system, the perspective is not nearly as cynical as Americans like to believe. Instead of seeing arranged marriages as an infringement on one’s personal choice at happiness (although I suppose it does happen), many Indian people trust their families’ judgment for choosing a spouse. After all, they have lived their entire lives with their families’ at this point; who would know them better than their parents? Their parents are also usually looking for spouses who are compatible financially and have similar values as their own family. They aren’t looking to ruin their son or daughter’s lives, they are trying to match them with the best possible partner. I’ve heard Indian people say that they have their entire lives to get to know each other; marriage, for them, is the process of learning to love someone.

For whatever reason, I relate more closely with this approach to love. I have no intention of demeaning it, or de-mystifying it, I just appreciate when I can understand things on a practical level. And being able to learn to love someone sounds much more believable than waiting around for the perfect partner to fall from the sky. Unfortunately, this is the perspective that I am constantly bombarded with from American movies. This is the sentiment that our cinema, our media, our culture keeps perpetuating. We expect things to just happen magically—by fate—and don’t want to believe that working for something as emotional as love could actually build us a fulfilling relationship.

As frustrating as it is sometimes, this is also how I tend to feel about writing. For whatever reason, I just expect the words to fall out of the sky and dance around my page until I string them into beautiful sentences. Sadly, that hasn’t happened yet, either. And I think the more I can understand my relationship with writing, the more I will be able to learn to cultivate it. Maybe even love it one day.

With that being said, something about Ireland has me thinking we are all here for a reason. It’s incredible that each person seems legitimately interested in contributing to a more well-rounded and fulfilling six weeks. As a journalist for NPR at JMU Martha Woodroof once wrote, sometimes it’s about deciding whether our desire to have functional relationships will trump all our excuses not to. In this case, I think fate could be the biggest excuse to overcome so far. Not necessarily to ignore fate, or discount destiny, but to understand where their place in the world is and when we need to take matters into our own hands. (850 words)