Jose had a great advantage, and anything Sanmao did that, in the eyes of others, might be crazy, seemed to him to be taken for granted. So it's also a pleasure to be with him.
—— Sanmao, "The Story of the Sahara"
Marriage is a long journey. Plato wrote about the views of the people on love in the "Drinking Chapter", of which Aristopan's view is very interesting: in the past, human beings were originally spherical with two mouths, four eyes, four hands and four legs, and such human beings were so powerful that they wanted to duel with God.
So God divided man into two halves, so that the power of man was reduced, and at the same time, he was busy searching for the other half all his life, and there was no time to fight with God.
The meaning of this story is that love makes people complete and also makes people stronger.
But at the same time, it also shows that the two halves that have been separated for so long and reunited need a lot of running-in.
Sanmao had written his story with Jose, and before getting married, Jose asked her, "How much do you want a husband who makes?" Sanmao replied: "If you don't like it, the multi-millionaire will not marry; if you like it, the billionaire will also marry." ”
However, in the face of Jose saying that she wanted to marry a rich person, Sanmao sighed, "There are exceptions."
It became a good story. However, the marriage of Sanmao and Jose is not a happy fairy tale of the princess and the prince, and from Sanmao's text, several characteristics of their marriage can be seen.
"I do my own thing"
Everyone is an independent individual, and marriage of course requires compromise, but the premise of compromise is to maintain their own "personality" and the other party can appreciate this personality.
Life often sees such stories: when boys chase girls, they appreciate that girls will play the piano and paint, and after marriage, they think that these are "waste of time"; before marriage, girls appreciate the heroism of boys on the basketball court, but after marriage, they hate their husbands for always playing basketball and not going home.
Of course, these phenomena can be explained from the perspective of "utilitarianism", that is, the interests of pre-marriage and after marriage are different, and so on. At the heart of this view is the idea that marriage needs to meet some kind of functional need, and once the other half's hobby undermines that need, contradictions erupt.
Sanmao told Jose before marriage that after marriage she would "do her own thing" and if she could not agree, she would not get married.
Jose replied, "I just want you to 'do what you want', losing your personality and style, why should I marry you?" ”
Jose knew Sanmao:
"She's a person who's always running wild horses in her head, and I'm just a small part of her life."
Jose did not want to occupy all of Sanmao, and likewise, did not interfere with Sanmao's hobbies, and Sanmao's preferences were also his preferences.
When Sanmao wanted to go to the Sahara to live, all her friends persuaded her that she could not live there, only Jose silently left, first came to the Sahara to work, rent a house, and wait for everything to settle down and notify Sanmao to come.
Sanmao and Jose were married in the Sahara, and Sanmao said in a letter to his parents that Jose:
"I love him so much, when I first married him, I didn't think of this, our feelings, is Jose is trying to increase, I have such a good husband, a lifetime without regrets, death is also blind." 」
The Sahara house was empty, and the money given by Sanmao's father was stored in the bank because of Jose's self-esteem, and in order to save money, the two used the wood of the coffin that the shop did not want to make into sofas, beds, tables and other furniture.
Despite their poverty, both men regard money as dung, and their tastes in life are the same.
Sanmao often cooks at home, entertains friends, neighbors, and Jose's colleagues, and although she is troubled by the neighbors' frequent use of her belongings in the book, she does not really pay attention to it.
Sanmao likes the sculptures of desert "artists", and the neighbors think that she spent money to buy a pile of broken stones that are not available, but Jose knows how to appreciate and understand Sanmao's hobbies.
Sanmao photographed people and scenes in the desert, and Jose photographed Sanmao.
Because of the adventure, Jose was deeply mired in the quagmire, and Sanmao was almost bullied by the bad guys who passed by, but all this did not stop them from continuing to travel and explore together.
Jose in Sanmao's pen makes people feel that this is her husband, more like a silent but all-time background, no matter what Sanmao writes, write about neighbors, write about landscapes, write customs, write about her learning to drive, be a doctor for neighbors, etc., all stories have Jose's shadow, even if not the protagonist, it is an inseparable role, everywhere.
This is perhaps the most comfortable way to get along in marriage, Jose does not understand Chinese, knows nothing about Sanmao's writing, and the two often sit quietly at home doing their own things. Jose is doing crossword puzzles, and Sanmao is reading.
Accept the imperfections of marriage
"It is easy to be good at first sight, it is difficult to be a person for a long time", "People are not good for a thousand days, and flowers are not red for a hundred days"... The ancients were well aware of the difficulties of getting along with each other for a long time.
Even if they are immortal lovers, there are inevitable bumps in life. Yang Dai wrote in "The Two of Us" that he had just given birth to his daughter and was hospitalized, and Qian Zhongshu, who was at home alone, often "did bad things", either overturned the ink bottle and stained the tablecloth, or smashed the lamp, broke the door and so on.
If put on today's Internet, these behaviors will inevitably lead to crusades such as "during the wife's confinement period, the husband's uselessness at home will only add to the chaos".
However, Yang Dai only said lightly, "It doesn't matter, I can get it right." ”
The same goes for Sanmao and Jose. Although the values of two people are in harmony, it does not mean that there are no contradictions. Some articles exaggerate the contradiction between Sanmao and Jose, saying that their marriage is not happy, Jose is cheating, the so-called happiness is an illusion constructed by Sanmao, and so on.
The content of these articles is exactly what Sanmao himself wrote, no one knows more about her marriage than Sanmao herself, and she does not hide the imperfections of marriage.
Sanmao had severe low back pain, and when he came to the Canary Islands, Jose's boss was extremely dark-hearted, not only often withholding wages, but also arranging workloads that could not be completed on time.
Jose is too honest and rigid, no matter how unreasonable the work is, how colleagues "touch the fish", he has worked hard to complete it alone, and even took Sanmao to work as a cook for his colleagues.
Sanmao, who had finished cooking, lay on the bed with a lot of pain in his waist and wanted to say something to Jose, but found that her tired husband had fallen asleep.
There is no such thing as perfection in the world, nor is there a perfect person, Jose is not perfect, he has a lot of "machismo" ideas, such as thinking that women cooking is taken for granted.
Jose's mother and sister and a large group of others came to visit them, and the group was chatting and laughing in the house, and only Sanmao was busy in the kitchen.
These days went on for days.
Of course, Sanmao is not a "virtuous" wife, she will eat all the dumplings sent by her brother-in-law at night, which makes Jose complain the next day: "You take advantage of people's good sleep to steal dumplings, how did you eat so much?" Can't others taste it? You haven't thought about it? selfish! ”
In Sanmao's pen, the quarrel between the two is also so interesting.
There is a follow-up to the dumpling incident: Sanmao tried to do it once himself, and Jose was greatly disgusted: the noodles were too hard.
Sanmao was not discouraged, after several experiments, her dumplings finally had a life, Jose sighed: "We two southerners, have changed the stomach of the north for dumplings." ”
Sanmao and Jose's marriage is not perfect, but all their differences and disputes are full of restraint, and they all let each other get by first, and then find a way.
Imagine if Sanmao, who was in pain in the waist, immediately woke up the sleeping Jose, and under such exhaustion, the two of them would inevitably have more quarrels; and if Jose grabbed Sanmao and ate the dumplings alone, sanmao might not have the heart to practice "dumpling skills" for her husband later.
In fact, two people look at each other's efforts in the eyes, even if they don't say it at the time, they will inevitably make up for it afterwards, which is the commonality of smart people.
Know how to let go and don't indulge
"There is no unbroken feast in the world", life still has an end, marriage is no exception, "the hand of the son and the son with the old", no matter how far the two go hand in hand, in the end it is still a journey of a person facing the unknown.
Jose died in a diving accident,
Sanmao was so sad that she couldn't help herself, she finished taking care of Jose's aftermath, and went to Jose's tomb every day to sit for a long time.
Until a few years later, when he sold jose's house and packed up his belongings, Sanmao still did not dare to open the cabinet in the storage room, which contained what Jose had held before his death. These are all things that Sanmao asked his friends to help deal with.
Many articles write about Sanmao's feelings, and always like to say that Sanmao is "martyred".
Sanmao did hang herself with stockings in the hospital, but not because of Jose, but because of her incurable disease, in "How Much Do You Know about Flowers in Dreams", Sanmao expressed his attitude towards death:
"I am willing to be the last one to die in the circle of life of my father, mother, and husband."
It is not because of fear of death, but precisely because of love, I chose to leave in the end.
The happier you live, the more you will not give up when you are separated at the end. The last person left behind is the most painful.
Many times in the middle of the night, Sanmao "lay in the dark, thinking of Jose almost crazy."
In the end, she was relieved, accepted this arrangement, and continued to move forward with the experience of the two.
"Believe in the will of God that nothing that happens in this world is accidental, and that one day there will be an explanation for all this."
"All of this contains a karmic origin, and what's more, as long as I know that Jose is well in that world, I am frankly grateful and can continue to love him as I did before I was born." 」
"Loneliness is like a shadow, loneliness is like a dream, there is no need to dissolve, it has become a symbiosis, it is uncomfortable to give it up."
Sanmao I jose, she was glad that Jose walked ahead of herself, otherwise this painful, difficult long night, is What Jose has to bear.
"Fortunately, none of this was his turn, and if he lived like me, then I would have fought with God desperately to come back and change him."
This may be the ultimate love for someone, I love you, and I can't even bear to let you feel sorry for what happened to me.
The happier the partner, the more dare not think about the days when the other half did not have themselves.
However, whoever goes first, the remaining one must face up to his own life.
Later, Sanmao also met many interesting people and experienced many interesting things.
Sanmao is still the same Sanmao, kind, enthusiastic, eccentric, and loves life.
In order to avoid the fierce rankings and the oppressive learning atmosphere, Sanmao attended a community college in the United States, and she became good friends with the school teachers and classmates, becoming the most popular person in the whole school.
Sanmao's life is still wonderful, and she is not blindly immersed in the memories of Jose, because she knows that if Jose has a spirit in heaven, she must hope that she can live happily. She took the thoughts of Jose into a long time:
"Jose, you promised me that you would wait for me over there, and with this promise of yours, I would have a hope."
There are many secrets about marriage on the Internet, such as "law of value", "core interests", "empathy", "staying independent" and so on. However, life is not a question test, and marriage does not have a standard answer. One can draw lessons from happy marriages, but one cannot infer the converse that marriage is bound to be happy as long as a few elements are met.
Modern society often uses the description of "market economy" to describe couples as "teammates", as if marriage is the same as "Teamwork" at work, family, children, etc. are the fruits of work.
In fact, marriage does not need to be measured by other references, and the clearest way to marry is the "person" himself.
Qian Zhongshu famously said: "Before I met Yang Dai, I never thought of getting married; I have married her for decades and have never regretted marrying her."
Ask yourself if you had the opportunity to do it all over again, would you still marry this person? Imagine that in five or ten years, you will still be around this person, will you regret or look forward to it, will you regret or expect?
Everyone will have their own answers, just as Sanmao summed up his marriage: "The things between husband and wife, sweet and sour, are confused, and it is like people drinking water, cold and warm self-knowledge." ”