A Wedding Speech

This weekend, I was called upon to speak at a friend’s wedding. Well… no one summoned me. None rang my bell, conjured me like some dancing monkey, but still I felt obliged. If there is anything I could offer such an occasion, it’s words, non? It’s a time honoured tradition to drag our pavement lyricists and barstool serenaders out into the lime light for just such celebrations, to shower the bride and groom in saccharine attention.

Alas, I had very little honey for their ears. Nor did I have a catalogue of embarrassments to pitch on them like what their family had. Instead, I believe, I broke with tradition and fettered a sword of Damocles over their heads. I damned them with the warning that they’re fucking lucky. Because love is no sweet symphony, but a rending hurricane one gets caught in. And they are but blessed for finding themselves caught together. For most are torn asunder on their own, all alone.

Suffice to say, me and Aphrodite aren’t on speaking terms.

Truth be told, I don’t often recognize this vaunted love as the fixture which joins two people together. Now, maybe that says more about me than this our current state of romantic entanglements, but what I spot between people looks more to me like obligation, chains, joint mortgages, shackling offspring, or just plain fear of what life might be without someone else to suffer it with. Whenever my eyes spy one of those heartfelt looks between intertwined people, I often see desire or expectation or want. But ever so rarely devotion. Real, solid, non-egoistic devotion. The kind which would throw itself in front of a bus for its subject.

Because how can one expect, or supply, such a devotion in a world where we’re taught that the grass is always greener. Options abound. There’s always a replacement. It’s all about turn-over rate. Never about how long something’s kept.

I fear that love is going extinct.

Granted, perhaps my fairy-tale notions of a quantifiable love, one gradable on a curve of true-to-false, is a childish thing a man in his middle age should have grown out of long ago. I gladly accept the blame for my infantile convictions if it means that my fears are unfounded. It would be an absolute fucking relief if I’m the egocentric degenerate here, scarred and damaged from too many misfires, who simply can no longer recognize what love looks like… if it would mean that my suspicions are unfounded.

Alas, I yet stand to be proven wrong.

Either which way reality is bent, my speech at the wedding garnered plenty of appreciation. This sword of Damocles, this curse of mine, must’ve been sharpened upon some whetstone of truth, which resonated with couple and guests alike. And I truly hope this doom of mine serves them well, in some small way, as a reminder of how lucky they are to have caught one another.

And, what do I know. Maybe love isn’t dying off like a Dodo. Maybe it’s just rare. Maybe Aphrodite isn’t such a heartless bint. Maybe she’s just over-worked and in need of a good, long, vacation…

/Sebastian Lindberg 29/8-2023

Loneliness is not a Sin

I snooze too long for comfort. Figure I should rouse myself by way of my news feed through Twitter. And so, first thing in the gods damned morning, I get acquainted to the term ”incel”.

And it drives me up the fucking wall.

Who the fuck are these Twitter activists to say that people, the assumption made being that they’re male, are disgusting misogynists and dangerous cretins just because they’re celibate not by choice but by circumstance? How does sexlessness and loneliness equal to a rapist?! I thought we talked about the dangers of labelling people last week! I can’t believe I have to slog through that again! And calming down from an indignant rage, I figured there had to be more to it than just the demonization of lonely men. Figured that there had to be a reason that I had never heard the term ”incel” until this morning, waking up to a hateful storm of it.

And then I dug into one of the saddest corners of the Internet that I have ever encountered…

Now here I sit, keyboard in hand, with a veritable smorgasbord of opened cans of worms.

Loneliness is a devastating emotion. The feeling of being trapped there, in that state, is even more so. It leads to a circus of dark paths, each spiralling off into yet darker corners of one’s mind. It can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. Such as the thoughts ”No one will ever love me” or ”Maybe this is it?”. All of them, in a certain regard, valid worries.

But loneliness alone makes not a monster.

Psychologists have since long concluded that sex and intimacy is a central need for the well-being, even the survival, of the individual. The UN have toyed with the idea that a healthy sexual life is a human right. It is in no way controversial to say that sex, and the intimacy and connectedness that sex is particularly equipped to evoke, is inalienably important to the human being. To the human soul, for lack of a better word.

That being said, no one person is in any way shape or form obligated to supply it. Which, inextricably, creates a deficit. A deficit that human beings will have to deal with. A way that isn’t defined by discriminatingly killing people. Or demonizing those that are alone not through choice, but consequence. Not by calling people ”sluts”, ”Chads” or ”Stacys”. Not by calling people ”prudes”, ”picky”, or ”ugly”. With neither misogyny or misandry. Not by taking proverbial ”black pills”. Or by instituting Lobster-esque hotels for the romantically impaired.

We have to do better than that. For loneliness is not a sin.

I wish I could summon up an outrage over this particularly toxic result of our societal relationship-centric state of mind. I wish I could get angry at insecure men, blaming women for some Lysistratian conspiracy (for why else would they be so lonely?). Or the Twitter activists for calling every ”involuntary celibate” a rapist and misogynist (for why else wouldn’t they be able to find a mate?).

Most of all, I wish I could summon up the same anger I found myself waking up with. Anger at being demonized by overly righteous zealots. By being brought to demonization by mad radicals. But now, having read about mass killings, ”Beta Uprisings”, anxious dog-walkers, and the vilification of men and women alike… I can only summon up one thing: A sinking sadness. Because this, all of this, is fucking pathetic.

/Sebastian Lindberg 1/5-2018