LUGHNASADH - HANDFASTING

LUGHNASADH - HANDFASTING

www.OmRupani.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello everybody. On August 1st, I saw on my calendar that it was the Celtic Festival of Lunasa. Now, I don't really know that much about Celtic tradition and folklore. When I was in film school and I was in directing class, I was working with some wonderful actors for my class project, scene I had to direct. And that year, uh, that school, one of the plays it was putting on was Dancing at Lunissa. So I would hear my actors uh talk about that play, I would watch them rehearse that play. I went and watched the performance of it when it was ready. And then very shortly after that, actually, they made a movie, Dancing at Lunissa, of the same play, storing Meryl Sleep and many other wonderful actors. Very good play, interesting movie, uh, lovely story. I saw that on my calendar and I became curious, and I just asked AI to tell me about this pre-Christian, very ancient uh harvest holiday, August 1st. It's supposed to mark the end of summer, the beginning of autumn. It's uh connected with the time of the year, the changing of the season, and then many other things that went with it. One of the things AI mentioned was that in the Celtic days, this holiday was an occasion for uh it said something like temporary marriages. And I'm like, ha, that's interesting. What are temporary marriages? I asked it to explain more to me, and it said uh the Celtic people had this tradition of uh a year and a day, married for a year and a day. That uh all the details are sketchy because uh it comes down to oral tradition and folklore, but apparently a young couple uh could be guided by their family, young men and a young woman who might be uh you know looking to get married, marriage age, that it was kind of a temporary betrothal, but no, they were betrothed, uh but possibly without consequences if things didn't work out, that they were in a way engaged, and it described a rather uh lovely ceremony, which I think would be very cinematic, and I think it still comes down to even today in marriage ceremonies that the boy and the girl would stand on the opposite side of a door or a threshold, and they would extend their hands and hold their hands, and their hand would be uh wrapped up in fabric or rope that it was called hand fasting to fasten the hand hands with rope or fabric or ribbon. And I believe this gesture, this tradition, uh has carried over. I think I think there are modern wedding ceremonies in which the bride and the groom they hold each other's hands and then a fabric is wrapped around their wrists and their hands in a gesture of hand fasting that you are bound now. Uh it's a beautiful, meaningful gesture. In the case of the uh temporary marriage at Lunisa, apparently uh the boy and the girl were allowed to walk away from that if they felt they could not make a go of it if they didn't feel they were good partners, and if they did, then they would uh make a permanent bond and get married and have a go at it, have a go at the life together, having a family, so forth. Uh anyway, I'm a bit of a romantic about all this. I really think it is it is very telling. I find it wonderful and endearing that uh so many traditions have existed regarding how to do the man-woman thing, so many traditions, so many methods, so many suggestions, so many ideas of how men and women should get together, what the process should be. What can we do to make this thing work? What can we do to make this thing last? What can we do to create a happy connection because it's really important? Unhappy marriages are a misery, and it really is worth asking and investigating how can we do this better, how can we bond better, how can we make this relationship work better, especially over the long run. So I was sitting with that and I wanted to share some thoughts with you, and again, also in connection with whatever uh ideas and clarity I feel I have uh come upon, which I'm sharing these days in my couples course. The first thing I wanted to share uh in comparison to maybe our modern take is that we we had we did acknowledge, I think we've acknowledged better during the past decades and centuries and eons that this is difficult. This is difficult, it is significant, and it is important. It's like the investigation needs to start there. That the man-woman thing is a challenge, the man-woman thing is not an easy thing, it is not a foregone conclusion. A man and a woman building a life together is no easy matter. A good partnership is no easy matter, it is nothing to be taken for granted. Begin with humility, begin knowing challenges will come.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Begin knowing this is going to be a very rocky road. This is not easy.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Doubt yourself, probably doubt your partner, doubt this whole connection. Difficult times will come. And whatever wisdom, whatever planning, whatever tradition we built around how to do the man-women thing, I think we put them in place to support, support ourselves, support each other, support couples, men and women to make this thing work. Uh, what I see today, and this is uh no news to anybody, that is in contrast to that seriousness, to that gravity, is so many people treating partners and potash potential partners today as disposable and interchangeable. Uh so many fish in the sea. I I believe there's an app with literally that title, isn't there? Dating app. I think that attitude itself is a form of sabotage. If you really believe uh the first sign of trouble or the first sign of conflict, first bad day in a marriage is a sign that you're you're in the wrong marriage with the wrong person. Um you don't stand a chance. If the expectation is there is going to be a perfect partner that fits with you, and then it'll be smooth sailing forever. I mean, it seems stupid. I mean, who believes that? It seems so stupid and naive to even point that out. Like, what grown-up person believes that? But people seem to be acting that way. I see people talking about their selection process, their dating process, and they really seem to be treating human beings like Kleenexes. This idea that there is just so much choice, this delusion of choice, this illusion of choice. I feel our brains have been hacked in some really clever way with this offering of choice, or seemingly an offering of choice. Choice is only meaningful or powerful if it renders an advantage. If I can if if you give me the choice with of five items, you say pick pick, you have the choice to pick anything you want out of these five. I'm like, okay, well, that's good, then perhaps better than having a choice between two. It seems correct theoretically. But then the idea is I will be able to examine the five, pick the very best one that's for me, that I will have enough sense, enough data that I will choose wisely and correctly. And you give me the choice of five, and I am capable of picking the best out of the five, and in there is the advantage compared to if I did not have any choice at all, if you just say this is it, this is what you get. Okay, so that seems like great. Well, have a choice between five, or you have a choice between 500, 5,000, but what is the what is the uh illusion, the delusion behind that, that out of the 50, the 500, the 5,000, you actually will be able to select the best option for you. And then and then what? And then what? Let's say you select the best option out of 50. Let's say you have a guaranteed stamp, you selected the best potential mate out of a choice of 50 potential mates. Hooray. Nah, what? What is it that you think is going to happen now? Smooth sailing from now on, blue skies. What are we counting on? Uh and it feels it feels like we have become infantile in our understanding of what relationships are, what they require of us, where the mastery is, where the path to success actually is. Right. We are trying to hack this in every generation. So I can imagine a little Celtic village, I don't know, a few hundred people maybe. Not a historian, but there weren't that many people around back then. This is pre-Christian days. This is before Jesus, these Celtic traditions. Small village, every year there are only so many kids coming of age. Parents are like, it's time for you to get married. And maybe you look in your own village, maybe you look in the next village, maybe there are a certain number of eligible partners, right? There are ten men, ten women, twenty men, twenty women, I don't know. But I mean that's about it. And you're like, well, how can we do this best? And today we have thousands, millions of choices, cities full of people. We're not doing any better. We're trying, we think we have more power, we have more power of choice, more knowledge, more data on each other, more freedom. And we are not really doing very well. And this is just interesting to observe, like how badly, how important this is for all of us. Relationships are really important. Unhappy relationships are one of the biggest sources of misery in our lives. Successful relationships are a prize, and they're not easy. In every culture, every religion, every tradition, through all of time, we have tried different things, different traditions, different ways of trying to make this better, trying to make this work. Every religion, every tradition, all over the world. And we are still at it. And it would not be an exaggeration to say our failure rate at this man-woman thing is at its peak right now. It's like it truly our failure rate is staggering. We are so unhappy. Men and women are so unhappy with each other. Men and women are so not getting along with each other. Uh the gods really must be laughing. We really must be their amusement in this area. We have tried so many things, and nothing has hacked it. No great philosopher has given us a template that has worked. All the great thinkers, all the great poets, all the great lovers, and our failure rate in getting along and creating lasting successful relationships is just staggering. I don't know. I just wanted to share that miserable, laughable observation. It's it feels like a joke. I'll I'll add I'll add this one point on top of it. This one distinction, which I think is another another crucial flaw. And I think this is something else, this is a perspective, a piece of wisdom that maybe the older generations, the the wise people of old, of centuries gone by, maybe they had it better than we do. I do make this one distinction, I think it's really important. So let's even say in this Celtic tradition, they had a tradition of the hand fasting. So they use boy and a girl, I don't know, they they like the look of each other, or their parents think they should get married, whatever the reason. And let's say they do have a trial marriage for a year and a day to see if they can get along today. Uh, at least in the West, uh, when I was growing up as a kid in India, there was no dating, but there's dating now. The West invented dating. Dating could be considered a form of this hand fasting. Uh, boys and girls used to exchange tokens before the token of the engagement was the ring, but before that, I don't know, boys used to give the girls a pin or something, and she would say, I got pinned. It was a form of saying we are committed to each other in some temporary way. We are we are dating, we are we are having a go at it to see whether a partnership is possible between us. It was a gesture of hand fasting of some kind. So, like what so the question then becomes well, okay, this young couple who is exploring to find out are we compatible? What are they assessing? What are they assessing of each other? How are they going to decide in the end whether they are a good match or not? And in here, I think there are two categories. There are two categories, and different traditions have placed different amount of emphasis on the importance of these two categories. So let me let me say what I think those two categories are. One category is uh human-to-human compatibility. Yeah, that's that's the romantic part. Are the two people crazy about each other? The boy and the girl are, you know, it doesn't really have to be heteronormative, two people. They're testing out whether they want to build together, whether they want to have a long-term connection together. So they are saying, are we do we get along with each other? Are we compatible? Do we quote unquote have chemistry? Do we have a personal connection? And that part, okay, and the second part, which I think is one that I very firmly believe in, which I believe is completely out of fashion today, is how good of a partner is this person? Let's go traditionally with the man-woman thing. The man looking at the woman and saying, How good of a wife is this woman gonna be? And the woman looking at the man and saying, How good of a husband is this man gonna be? The roles you're auditioning each other for the role of the partner. The woman is auditioning the man to be a husband, the man is auditioning the woman to be a wife. You're auditioning the roles, and you're seeing how good is this person in this role? How good of a husband is this man, how good of a wife is this woman? And I would say that that's not a personal assessment. I would say how good of a husband you are is kind of like objective, like how good of a tango dancer you are. It truly is about a skill set. Being a great husband is a mastery, being a great wife is a mastery, and I would say these are two metrics, two very separate metrics. And I see today, and it seems like almost 100% the emphasis has gone to our compatibility. Do we get along? Are we crazy about each other? Is this person my soulmate? Blah blah blah. Are we two perfect snowflakes that just fit together like jigsaw puzzles? And the failure rate in that particular attitude in just finding my perfect fit, the person. Who fits me perfectly is the success rate there is disastrous. The idea that that is how you're supposed to find a partner, like a like a perfect jigsaw piece to you, is is what is also fed by this compulsion of choice. That I am this snowflake of a jigsaw piece, and what a good perfect relationship is, I need to find somebody who fits with my jigsaw piece perfectly. So I'm going to go through 50,000 jigsaw pieces till I find the one that fits perfectly with me, and then Eureka. And nobody has had this eureka. Failure rate is 100%. And yet, this is the model with which people are running full speed ahead. That I am a perfect little unique snowflake, and I need to find the other perfect little unique snowflake that just fits with me. And then it'll be all perfect. Compatibility is it. Two people are gonna meet that they are perfectly compatible with each other, and then they will never have any more problems again. I think nobody beyond the age of a 12-year-old girl should indulge in that idea. It is a bad idea of what romance is, of what falling in love is. But it is the model upon which all ideas of romance, all stories of romance are built. That a boy and a girl meet and they are thunderstruck by each other, and they just fit, and there is chemistry, and the two complementary snowflakes have found each other, and it is destiny and it is fate, and isn't it grand? And the stars are aligned, nonsense, utter nonsense, immature, childish nonsense. The other side is what I believe in. I if that if that idea is what romance is, my idea of what makes good relationships work, is like entirely industrial and non-romantic. Here's my proposition. Truly, here's my proposition. I believe being a man who knows how to provision well for a woman is an art form, it's a skill, it is something a man has to develop mastery in, it is something that he can develop mastery in. He can build a life, he can build his money, he can be embodied in his masculinity, he can have character, he can learn how to handle a woman's emotions, he can learn how to handle a woman's body, he can truly become a good partner to a woman. Similarly, a woman can acquire all the wonderful masteries that make her a valuable partner to a man, that these are actual skills, these are actual masteries. And if I were to train 100 men who are qualified to be good husbands, and 100 women who are qualified to be brilliant wives, and I randomly assign them to each other, each one of them will create a successful marriage. That's my gauntlet. Fuck chemistry.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Fuck your unique snowflakeness. Bullshit. Nonsense.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

If we run the two experiments, hundred people who have experienced limerence with each other, who have become infatuated with each other. Okay, let's run these hundred couples in an experiment and see how they turn out in a year. Compared to hundred trained husbands with hundred trained wives paired randomly, and they are showing up for each other with their mastery, with their skill, with everything they have to offer. I believe the random assigned, skilled, masterful people can create better relationships as an experiment. Now, does that mean there's no such thing as chemistry? There's no such thing as personal preference, of course, there is, speaking theoretically, but to make a point. But then what is the average? What is the split? 50-50. 50-50, it's about your your skill set as a partner, and 50% is attraction. You know, I would easily put it at 75-25 in favor of relationship mastery. First have relationship mastery, bring that to the table from both sides, and then look for the X factor. That your relationship mastery is much bigger determinant of your success rate, your chemistry and your initial attraction is nonsense, it's not reliable, it's not sustainable. And if you don't have relationship mastery, the lack of relationship mastery will destroy the limerence, it will overshadow it very quickly. Whereas the opposite happens when there is relationship mastery, and the two people really feel taken care of by each other, they really feel their partner is showing up for them, their partner is a good partner. With that connection, the affection gently grows over time. Why? Because part of your relationship mastery is being genuinely interested in your partner, part of your relationship mastery is wanting your partner to win. Part of your relationship mastery is wanting more for your partner. And when two people are actually doing that for each other, their affection grows towards each other because they are they're good to each other. That's part of their relationship mastery. Be good to your partner, give your partner what your partner wants. Women give men what men want from women, men give women what women want from men. Do that for each other, and your affection and even your passion will grow over the years rather than diminish. That's my proposition. I think we're doing a lot of things backwards these days. We are asking all the wrong questions. Our selection process is nonsense, it is based entirely on limerence and chemistry and attraction. Our decision making is based entirely on that. People are not developing their relationship mastery. They're not even asking for or searching for or looking for the relationship mastery in the person they are dating. They are only interested in attraction, attraction, attraction, attraction. The feels, the vibes, the feels, the vibes. People are literally saying that these days, and they sound like idiots. Who talks like that past the age of 14? The feels and the vibes. That's what grown-up relationships are built on. People in their 30s and 40s are talking about the feels and the vibes. Like you people sound retarded. You don't deserve a partnership. You are so immature, you're so idiotic, you are you so don't have respect for how difficult relationships are. That if this is your attitude, if you think relationships are feels and vibes, you're a moron. Marriages can't be built on fields and vibes. If that, and if you want relationship mastery acquired, yeah. I have some suggestions. Come to me, come to somebody else, but really learn to be a better partner to your partner. Learn to really nourish your partner, learn to learn to know what your partner wants. Right? Most people don't even know what their partner wants. Most people, the men, women don't even have this emphasis. Like, what are women looking for from men? And what are men looking for from women? And like really make that your god make that your challenge. Give women what women want from men. Give men what men want from women. Create a win-win together. Appeal to your partner's self-interest. Have your focus on it. Not only today, tomorrow, not only in the first week of relationship, in a 20-year marriage. Wake up every day and look at what I can do for my partner today. Put your attention on your partner, see where they are stuck, see where they need expansion, see where you can contribute to them. That's what a great partnership is about. It is not, you know, the feels and the vibes, if they come as part of that attention, part of that investment, part of that ownership of each other, then the feels and the vibes are great. Right? If they come part of the parcel of that commitment to each other. But that relationship mastery is where we need to have our focus on to make this thing work. And it's not automatic, it is not being taught these days. Most of our parents didn't have it, they didn't display it. There are no schools for it except crazy ass schools like I have. So that'd be my message. Uh, the man-woman thing is a really big challenge, it's always been a big challenge. Nobody's been able to completely hack it. Right? I think it is a big amusement of the gods. Like, let's really see them tackle this one. See who comes close to hacking it. That's my suggestion. Don't rely on chemistry, don't rely on your perfect snowflake fit. Please come out of this delusion of infinite choice. It is not how relationships are built. That you just have to go through a million people and find your fit, and then everything will be great. Nobody has ever won this lottery. Look around you. Many people thought they had won this lottery, only to end up miserable in a very short period of time. And yet, people keep making this bet over and over. Like, oh, I just need to get back on the app and keep flipping and flipping and flipping and flipping. Like it's like a gambler's addiction. The next the next throw is going to be the perfect one. The next selection is going to be the perfect final selection. It's not how relationships work. Really, side with relationship mastery, not with chemistry.