Thoughts on Getting Hitched

Is 2009 a year for weddings? It seems like it is. Most of my “single” friends are planning their big day this year. Now I’m wondering, is it because my contemporaries are already running after time and that marriage is the next big step they are obliged to take? I can picture out the entire neighborhood chasing my friends one by one and upon reaching a corner they jump over the fence. Yes, marriage is like jumping over the fence. Because status quo could be boring and dead-end, we have to leap from single to nuptial state. And the mass hysteria is after me too. I’m turning 28 this April so social norms say I’m mature enough to get married.
I remember one sensible joke on thirty-something-single-woman: If a woman’s still in her twenties she would ask, “Who’s the man?” But when she reached 35 and still single, she should say, “Where’s the man?”

Some people say women’s biological clock won’t start ticking until they’re 35. By the time I reach that age, my feeling would be similar to Captain Hook’s fear of the ticking clock inside the crocodile’s belly. Just imagining Hook’s bulging eyes, sweaty right hand, cold feet, and paranoia bordering to insanity, made me understand the urgency to run after the first man who would cross my path at age 35! Otherwise, the ticking clock would explode and I would have one hundred years of solitude.

If I would really consider that maxim as a philosophical truth, it would mean I still have 6 more years (before my uterus becomes rigid) to spend and enjoy my life being single. It would also mean that after 6 years, my chances of finding a suitable partner to tie the knot with would get slimmer and slimmer each passing year. And that “single blessedness” would turn to “single wretchedness.” The analysis is simple. By the time I would be 35, most of my male counterparts were either married with 2 children or unmarried yet fathered 2 children. Or worse, they might have been married twice and just skimming the market to snag the third hopeless romantic fool! So what choices do I have now? Marry somebody old enough to be my father or find myself the likes of Ashton Kutcher (the last option could work if I would be as voluptuous as Demi!)

As much as I am enjoying single life, I don't want to remain this way forever. Like my friends, I’m ready and willing to leap a fence this year too. Not because the society pressures me. Not because of the need to propagate my infallible genes (hahaha). But because I want to know what legacy will I bequeath my future generations. When I’m old and gray-haired, I want to look back and reflect on how full my life is.