“All you need is love” What a fucking lie. The Beatles have more than their fair share of unhealthy messages but that is one of them.
It’s not that love is not important. It is. It’s the fetishisation that occurs in the media surrounding weddings and babies and big houses and SUVs.
Fuck where can I start. Weddings and wedding photos. What a fucking waste of good money. Honestly what everyone wants from a wedding is a good time and a quick ceremony and a few photos. Not this travesty that a wedding has become where people one up each other about how much money they wasted on the fucking thing while parading their engagement, pre-engagement, pre-wedding, wedding, post wedding, honeymoon, 1st anniversary, 2nd anniversary, 7th anniversary photos. Well, if they ever get to the 7th one that is.
I can only imagine how unenjoyable and boring and tedious their wedding day actually was. Do these people even have sex? I doubt it. In fact most of these loud fuckers don’t even love the person they’re with. They’re just scared of being alone and don’t want to admit to themselves that the reason they are marrying is because they can’t find anyone better and this person seems vaguely suitable to their parents. So they go on and on about how happy they are as some kind of delusion that they want to be constantly congratulated on.
I have no desire to congratulate them on their impending unhappiness.
But their delusion has arms that stretch far beyond themselves. They then decide everyone else who is not like them must be unhappy!
Next let’s go on to the idea that a baby will make everyone happy and fix everything and make you feel loved. Here’s news– that feeling of emptiness is NOT going to be solved by having a child. In fact that’s an easy recipe for post natal depression. And your relationship? If it’s crappy already, it’s going to get way crappier once you have a child. Having a child is stressful, difficult and hard work. It is truly rewarding if you accept this truth and are prepared for it but otherwise, you’re kidding yourself.
Ooh, how about the “stay at home mum” racket? Apparently you are going to give up everything including your intellectual pursuits in order to be a permanent child rearer. What happens after the kids go to school? Oh well, I guess that’s what soaps, knitting classes and SUV road rage are for.
Big houses and SUVs are firstly environmentally irresponsible (oh but it’s only affecting people who live on small islands and we don’t believe in science anyway), secondly expensive and thirdly irritating. People can’t afford the lifestyles that they lead despite making a lot of money and then whinge in the media about how they want their child care benefits.
And what about the underlying idea behind this? That you can treat important things as possessions and that material possessions are going to make you happy? Acquiring a spouse and a child is not the same as acquiring a new car. It’s a relationship, not a possession. It requires work and love and strength. You can’t just chuck it in the shed or sell it when you’re sick of it.
This would all be sort of ok if it was primarily an upper middle class problem. But it’s not. This is something that deeply affects poor people who aspire to the above. No-one places value on education any more. All that is important is a ring on your finger from someone and a baby and a house. But these things aren’t going to make you happier or richer or feel better. They are going to make you poorer and if done for the wrong reasons, deeply unhappy. In fact they may even rob you of your ability to better yourself if you’re not in a position to afford them.
We all wonder why we’re feeling unhappy and empty and lonely even though we’re surrounded by “love” of the “all you need is love” sense. Maybe it’s because no actual love went into the decision. Not even self love. And perhaps love isn’t the only thing? Perhaps contentment and peace and exercise and intellectual engagement are just as important.
It really drives me mad, reading those magazines that perpetrate this vicious cycle of social deprivation via “love” and “success” in ways that really have nothing to do with either love or success.
If and when I have a waiting room, all this shit is going straight into the recycling bin.