How The Hell Do Two People Confess To Be Together in Sickness and in Health?
In front of everyone? Even to the point of televising it?
My mother called me to the sitting room to witness the wedding of Prince William and Princess Catherine.
The sun was out. It too didn’t want to miss the internationally televised event.
Now that I think about it, my mother loves weddings. I doubt she would ever say no to a wedding ceremony.
When we used to stay in Kayole, the Divine Word Parish (DIWOPA) was a hub for most of us. There was a field in front of the main door of the church, where we would indulge in a game of football while my sister and brother played basketball a short distance from us.
We would also frequent the place on Saturday afternoons, in case wedding receptions were held in the same venue as the service. I must have heard my first taste of pilau at these events.
We invited ourselves. Unashamedly. We were not just underdressed — we were wrongly dressed.
We’d clear our plates and never thought to ask for a second filling. But we wouldn’t deny it if they offered.
Weddings are a cause for celebration. Two people commit to loving each other, in front of everyone, and symbolized by a ring. The ring is a reminder.
Arguably, for a few minutes in a couple’s life, one of the most memorable moments is when the couples recite their vows.
Let us look at it keenly — to see what it means
A twist to a story would earn your essay more marks during primary school.
Teachers, it appeared, never liked a happily-ever-after wedding. They wanted some drama.
I can’t recall ever reading a wedding with a happy ending. There was always a long-lost lover who would storm into the church and wreak havoc.
The title was often if not always: A Wedding Gone Sour.
This turn of events, too, was after the couple had exchanged vows.
It was never romantic. A single event could make you question if love ever exists. True love, whatever that is.
Love blinds.
It blinds one lover to the faults of another. It blinds the congregation once you’ve received the invitation for the ceremony. It blinds you to the demands of wedding vows.
Let’s have a look at the classic list of promises we’ve often heard.
I Eve take you Adam, to be my husband
1. To have
2. And to hold from this day forward
3. For better
4. For worse
5. For richer
6. For poorer
7. In sickness
8. And in health
9. To love
10. And to cherish
11. Until death do us part
The starting 11 of potential wins and losses.
There will be times when you want someone to hold but your spouse is not there. There will be bad times that you go through together and good times that you enjoy by yourself. So these promises might not always hold.
Let’s say each has a probability of happening. For equality, each has the same probability.
To make it easier, let’s say they will either honor a component or not. Each will then have a probability of ½.
Now, according to the laws of probability, the function ‘and’, means multiply. I split the vows to include the components separately, to show how this mathematical function will apply.
Eleven possibilities.
So probability of ½ and ½ and ½ and ½ …for all eleven possibilities. That’s ½ eleven times. In total, 1/2048.
If we’re to stick to a classic litany of promises we make to each other when we make vows, it shows that there’s a 1/2048 chance of honouring all these promises.
That’s a low number.
The word to describe such a probability is improbable.
What does improbable mean?
The sun rises in the morning of summer — sigh, I only know this because my mother took me to school — with a high probability. You’ll probably see the sun tomorrow morning.
With vows, we confess these promises to each other but on this keen dissection, show how improbable it is.
Humans are the only ones sensitive enough to have a wedding ceremony. Other animals are not as extra.
Before everyone, you commit to an improbable outcome without knowing. The priest doesn’t know it, the couple doesn’t know it and the congregation too is in the dark. They all celebrate it.
Now that you’ve read this, you do. Or at least, you will once you’re done.
So, what does it mean?
Why do two people commit to do the improbable?
Admittedly, they don’t know it’s improbable.
Let us call these vows improbable commitments.
Rephrasing the question, it becomes:
Why do two people commit to improbable commitments?
Before we get into what we think it might mean, there’s something to learn about the anatomy of a scientific theory that borrows the same ideas as wedding vows.
The similarities between wedding vows and powerful scientific theories
Powerful theories have significant explanatory power.
This means the theory can explain a lot of phenomena that previously eluded scholars. For instance, we did not know much about the potential origin of mitochondria, until Lynn Margulis defended the idea and developed the theory.
In a sea of potential explanations, the one by Margulis was the most promising. Now, let’s assume that the potential explanations are 100. Margulis’ theory is one of the other possible theories — 1/100.
The other theories contribute to the bulk of 99/100.
In a word, Margulis’ theory is improbable.
But, if the theory contains various components, it introduces another layer of improbability. If the theory has to do this, then that, flip to this, and finally end here, it means it has several components that can fail.
That’s another layer of improbability.
But if a theory has several components it means it habours different facets of information in it. For wedding vows, the theory could be the wedding ring. In it are the facets of the wedding vows each partner is committing to the other.
Suppose the theory is successful in all the different tests it has been subjected to. Different tests test different aspects of a theory and thus give explanations for the noted observations.
The more successful the tests, the more explanations we get, the more we know about the theory. The more we know, the more we discover the previous potential of the theory to fail. The more we know this, the more aware we become of how improbable the theory was from the beginning.
The offshoot is the more improbable a theory, because of the different known and unknown facets, the greater the explanatory power.
Wedding vows are improbable because of the different promises I have listed — 11 as a baseline standard. The different tests are life’s challenges. Successful tests, the kind where the couple survives hardships, are a testament to the rare relationship one has with another.
An improbable one.
In light of the evidence, what does this mean?
Divorce rates are a reliable measurement of the vows one committed to another.
They are high. However, the figures depend on country, religion, marriage types, periods in history, and age cohorts. It varies from numbers as high as 50% to lows of 10%. Such a wide variance doesn’t tell us much.
We can only make out trends with little to no explanation about the causal factors.
If, however, we’re to consider what I have highlighted, we can make some conclusions about the tests of marriage vows. A fifty percent divorce rate means there are 50% of others with marriages that have succeeded. Possible.
Others could have lost spouses or even separated.
It’s still not clear.
What we can surmise is that vows held their ground in roughly 50%, on one tail end. These are not bad figures. They are also sobering, to show that one should not think that marriages will end like all ladybird series — happily ever after.
For those that survive, regardless, they show that the vows hold a lot of explanatory power. The couples have survived throughout the years of different tumultuous moments, resilient despite being improbable.
Arguably, it is because they are improbable that they survive. It’s difficult to rule out this possibility.
What I’m trying to say is…
Vows are a powerful testament to the rare bond one person has with another.
The more improbable, the more likely it is impregnated with explanations for the success and failure of certain marriages.
For today, let us look on the bright side. In a world filled with billions of people, there are potentially billions of couples whose marriages have remained intact through age, different historical timelines, countries, and all sorts of skirmishes.
Social media paints a different picture. It’s not always lies, cheating, and divorces. There’s a sea of budding and thriving relationships that never get to your feed.
When someone gets deep into their pockets and commits to getting a document approving of a union between one adult and another, something potentially powerful is brewing.
So, I typed a text to a girl I used to see
Saying that I chose this cutie pie with whom I wanna be
And I apologize if this message gets you down
Then I CC’ed every girl that I’d see-see ‘round town
And hate to see y’all frown but I’d rather see her smilin’
Wetness all around me, true, but I’m no island
Peninsula maybe, it makes no sense, I know crazy— Andre 3000
Making a promise as weighty as a vow is crazy.
But when you make that promise, try to stick to that improbable vow, because the more it survives, the more likely it is to cement the bond.
The only way to know is to do it. To try it. At least twice.
And play your part.
Have a lovely Valentine's Day.
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