Cupid, international

Cupid’s day of fame is slated for this upcoming Tuesday. It’s time, therefore, for an updated look at the trenches in the love-and-war situation. This time around I have a tactic, a tip, to pass along to you.

The tip is to not write the following inscription on the Valentine’s card you give to your spouse:

“Marriage is like a besieged castle; those who are on the outside wish to get in, and those who are on the inside wish to get out.”

Few people would actually be tempted to put that into a card, but it’s still good for a chuckle.

The saying is a proverb that was featured in a YouTube video by Peggy Lee. She’s the charismatic teacher behind PeggyTeachesChinese.com. Peggy translates the proverb into Chinese in order to illustrate the use of the term “like.”

I’ll take a quick tangent and mention that her next example is translating the phrase, “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna’ get,” a quote attributed to the fictional character Forrest Gump. The vocabulary in that sentence is simple, but you’ve got to be pretty good at Chinese to come up with the right grammar. The title of the video, for those interested, is “Intermediate Chinese–Chinese people in San Francisco.”

Anyway, let’s get back to the romantic paradoxes. We can offer a corollary to the castle proverb. It will, in fact, be some homegrown Saipan wisdom: “If you’re married when you move to Saipan, you’ll wind up single. And if you’re single, you’ll wind up married.”

I think that’s the second thing I ever heard about Saipan. The first was the crab-bucket phenomenon, which I shall assume needs no explanation, and even if it does, I’ll avoid offering one today since I don’t want to get mired in cynicism.

Speaking of cynicism, as Valentine’s Day approaches, it does so as U.S. statistics report a steady, decades-long decrease in marriage rates along with an increase in the median age at first marriage. Marriage is apparently a tougher sell now than it used to be, at least in the U.S.

This has been analyzed and reported in all sorts of places and in all sorts of ways. That’s called an “evergreen” topic; one that can always be presented for discussion. I wouldn’t be surprised if Valentine’s season is accompanied with some news stories about trends in marriage, or, perhaps more accurately, trends in non-marriage.

Still, I know plenty of people who have been married for 30 years or for 40 years, or even longer. Many of my classmates have surpassed their 25th anniversaries. Oddly enough, I don’t recall any of my friends marrying their college sweethearts but I remember a few who married their high school sweethearts after college.

When I was at a Christmas party a few weeks ago I noticed that six languages were being spoken at the same time, and that was a small gathering. I mentally scrolled through my list of friends and realized that our wives are from about a dozen countries. That’s not surprising, since most of my friends live, or have lived, in the west Pacific. Cupid operates on an international scale, but the vast distances don’t diminish the accuracy of his ordnance.

I suspect that Cupid maintains some sort of re-supply facility on Saipan. After all, some of his most successful sneak attacks have been in the CNMI.

Me, I’m a sucker for all holidays, but only in a minor way for Valentine’s. The gig has a perfunctory air about it so I try not to let it gather too much momentum. By contrast, I always let Christmas slip the leash with budgetary overruns that exceed the fiscal deficits of many small, semi-industrialized nations.

Anyway, that’s this year’s survey of the love-and-war trenches. I wish you well, and I hope that no matter which side of the castle wall you’re on, it’s the side you want.