Reasons for Marriage and Family

       00311115  马 杏     生命科学学院           7班

       All people are not married out of love.  The reasons for marriage vary in different situations.

      The most foolish reason for marriage is vanity.  Those people who get married for vanity do not live their lives for themselves.  They care for others’ ideas too much and sacrifice their own happiness for this childish reason.  Beauty, wealth, fame are not bound to make a family happy.  A combination based on vanity will always falls apart.

      “You make me want to be a man.” a hero said to a heroine in a film.  I think this sentence in some way tells us that some idealists marry for a sheer reason—love.  They prefer remaining single to getting married for other reasons.  A poet named Xu Zhimo once wrote: I am searching for my lover in the sea of people.  It is lucky if I find her.  It is my fate if I can not.  Many pieces of poem and prose describe love as something very pure and romantic.  Someone who believes in them wants to put it into practice.  That makes the love idealists.

      There are also many people getting married just because they need someone to share their happiness and sorrows.  There are things they can not tell their family members and friends.  But they can tell their spouse.  And they need a goal to strike for.  A majority of people can not work just for work reason.  It is very grievous if someone gets a remarkable achievement but he does not know whom he works for.  We are all alone in the world.  People need companions and someone to live for.  So they get married and set up families. 

      For most Chinese, I think they get married out of convention.  A man or a woman older than 30 will be laughed at if he or she still remains single.  What is more important, Chinese tradition does not pay much attention to the love between two people who will get married.  Especially when the couple has their children, the love between them is noting.  Their children mean more.  The couple may hate each other, but they won’t abandon their children just for this reason.  They love their children and regard them as their hope and the reason for their living.  Maybe raising children is a way to realize the value for Chinese people’s life.  For most people, they can not make great achievements.  The only to prove that they once lived is leaving offsprings.  Men and women can die, but their connections with the world will not die if their children or children’s children are still living in the world.  This is a Chinese way to realize self fulfillment. 

      We are just common human beings.  We can not jump out of the circulation of birth and death.  We are vulnerable and need marriage and family to make us stronger.  So people get married, no matter what reasons for.