Oh, hell...

Our imaginations, infrequently though, are fevered. The psychological burdens of filial expectations sometimes require the conjuring of fantasies, hence the feveredness of the imagination. For this reason, masculine children learn to avoid certain emotionally-laden topics, unlike their female siblings who are handicapped from the moment their maternal parents swaddle them in pink and decree that the harsh world is to be kept at bay at all cost. Any way, once the expectations of adulthood begin to be expressed by parental figures, it is inevitable that the imagination will run to what sort of, as the King James puts it, helpmeet one deserves or should woo.

Thoracic surgery does not have the capacity to determine whether expressions of romantic attachment are true or not. Neither it seems are the undulating lines on the print out of an electrocardigraphic machine. Poets are the ones who seem to have located the core of human's heart that had nothing to do with biophysics, biomechanics or biochemistry and their vivid descriptions of emotional and spiritual congress between soul mates have enraptured humanity for generations, inspired teenagers to feats of derring-do in their amatuerish expressions of devotedness and generally brought tears to eyes of matrons who should know better.

Suffice to say, man is introduced to his fellow man in a generally hostile expulsion and his departure depends entirely on how he walks his path. It is during his preferably long sojourn on this plane that man must determine whether the poets and the authors of religious exhortations are right, that his path will be the more fulfilling if it is taken, hand in hand, with a helpmeet. 

The choice, in modern times, is varied. It is not made with the assistance of harridans with an axe to grind against that tribe or that clan. It is done largely in the absence of the wisdom of parental and filial relations. It is done in the full glare of a thousand screens, some valedictory, some hostile. It is done without the expectation of success and the fear of abject failure. It has become the modern equivalent of the spirit quest and it has been the cause of more misery and misunderstanding than all the wars of the twentieth century combined. It is the reason grown men seek solace in the bottle of amber-coloured or clear-coloured spirits. It is the reason some boys grow up before their time and some men remain boys till they are shoved this mortal plane. It is the reason that we search for reasons for not doing one thing or the other. It is now an industry.