Is there a Forever?
I ask this question after I heard news about the separation of a couple I knew. I ponder on the thought of “forever”. Whether in the sense of a relationship, marriage or even love itself. Does love last forever? Do marriages last forever anymore? Can any relation last forever for that matter?
I’m saddened by the reality we are living these days. According to what we are witnessing, more and more, nothing lasts. Contrarily, back in the days, it seemed that everything lasted longer. Marriages did last, even though they had their challenges. Relationships didn’t break as fast and wreckful as the case is nowadays. Love seemed to be on a different level. Or was it all an illusion?
Did people have the same issues then as we do now? Did they handle it better? Or did they just have less options? Or were they not as evolved? Or is this all a big play in which we are all actors and actresses, each with a role to play until the curtains close and we move on to the other side.
This is not pessimism or being negative. I won’t even go as far as saying I’m being realistic. I’m simply baffled and asking the questions that I know most of us on this planet have no answer to. We each try to find comfort in thinking we know the answer. But truly, none of us really can ever know for sure.
Hence, I ask, is there a forever with anything? Logically, the answer is a “NO” Why? Because it has been proven that we are constantly changing and evolving as humans. Life around us is constantly evolving. Our circumstances are ever changing from one stage to the next.
We have witnessed ourselves get older, age-wise, including the changes in our physical appearances, abilities and mental health. We find ourselves in situations where we constantly have to make choices.
Usually, we are forced to make different choices as our external world shifts and circumstances change. We can’t be the same people ten years from now let alone a week from now. We love living in the comfort zone of what we know and gotten used to. Yet, life is continually forcing us to change and make different choices. Otherwise, we will be left behind and will not feel like we fit in the society that is changing so fast. The society we are part of and can’t escape from.
Yes, we are constantly changing. What we need today won’t be what we need tomorrow. What made us happy yesterday, doesn’t make us happy today. And what we desired a year ago, may be the furthest thing from our mind a year later. Changes are there whether we like it or not. People change. Their feelings change. Their tolerance changes. Their strengths change. Yesterday you couldn’t set a boundary. Today you can. Today you are putting up with nonsense, tomorrow you will have enough and say ‘f$&@ it, I’m done, I deserve better than this.’
Safe to say, there is no such thing as forever. At least in the meaning we have come to understand it. Forever becomes a thing when both parties work at things or want the same thing or when you accept things even though you don’t really want to. Forever happens when you don’t allow yourself the chance to grow or be different while the other is refusing to evolve. Forever is when you deny yourself the opportunity to grow and stay stuck in a dynamic just so you can say you made the ‘forever’ thing work.
Forever can also work out when the people involved are growing together and truly understanding that forever is a fantasy, yet they are living it day by day, being in and allowing the flow.
Forever is possible. But it’s not a given. It takes work to have a forever marriage, a forever relationship. It takes a love so pure and accepting to have a forever kinda love based on mutual respect, freedom and acceptance. Something the majority of people may never experience. Blessed are those who do.
