The Hebrew word for love is
ahava. It also means
I give. I find it interesting that that concept has seeped out of the gist of mainstream love in 2014. I don't speak Hebrew except
for the Ten Commandments and a few blessings, but those five letters are more suggestive of self interest, as in
I have, than they are of gifting.
Marriage has asked a lot of me: giving kind words when I wanted to complain, extending the benefit of the doubt when I wanted to accuse, offering my time when I wanted to relax. Maybe it would be good if we tried a rebranding. Rather than asking "Are you in love?" inquire "Are you ready to give of
yourself?"
I am not a sociologist but I wonder if there are cultures where the expectations are different. The society I live in seems obsessed with happiness at the cost of kindness, self interest to the exclusion of altruism. Probably there is not a market for magazines called Me and Mine or Self in a country like Zimbabwe. But here on American soil they fly off the shelves in the relentless quest for personal
fulfillment.
But what if marriage is not actually a strategy for parallel egocentricity? What if instead it is a system for turning down the volume on our own egos in deference to the needs of others?
