Submission

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“Total submission is a kind of freedom.”
…says a billboard at schipol airport. I noticed as I waited, yet again, for KLM to put me back on the plane they forgot I was supposed to have a seat on. The proverb made me think about arranged marriages. An acquaintance of mine once had a discussion with a Sri Lankan chef, during which he presented her with the following questions in argumentation for arranged marriage.


• When was the last time you were happy with your dating life?
• Why do you get in relationships, and why do they usually end?
• How often did your relationship not end well and why?
• What do you expect from a relationship? What is truthfully your ultimate goal in dating?


The essence of this claim is perhaps that with too many choices we are never satisfied. We always dream of something better, thus nothing is ever good enough, and we miss our ultimate relationship target, which for many people is security. Imagine not having to stress around with all this dating bull. When we get to pick ourselves, how large are the odds of picking wrong? We are amazingly young and dumb after all. The chef proves how submission can be liberating in certain situations. Paradoxically, some of the experiences that make us feel most free involve giving in to forces we cannot control. For example acting on intense emotion, like screaming at your parents after all these years, crying till you pass out or kissing someone as if to say yes, you going on that exchange for the next three months is the end of the world and the universe as I know it.

Love is arguably the strongest of these uncontrollable force. There is no fighting true love say the fairytales. We nurse secret dreams of ‘the one’ - a someone who, by divine design, compliments us in every way. Now if there really is such a one, which I must say I believe even the most cool and calculating of us secretly hope that there is, and you and the one are by the universe itself designed for one another, then nothing can be done to stop it. If love is invincible, and you are in love, then you are in effect controlled by love. Love is the greatest submission. Further, however indefinable love is it is still on this view a force that makes you be with someone whether you like it or not. We are not free from love, and further we do not want to be. The whole set-up seems suspiciously similar to an arranged marriage. In both cases it is not your choice who you come to love. We love submitting to love as a wholly dominating force, yet we loath the idea of anything else forcing people to marry.



Of course there is a vital difference. In arranged marriages you are being told what to do by other persons, a concept which goes against liberal principles. Yet our secret belief in pre-destined love may be seen as a repressed yearning for the freedom we feel when we completely submit ourselves. Maybe, on some level, we miss that kind of freedom, existent in childhood, before the infinite line of choices appeared in the distance and blocked our horizons. We find consolation in the eternal dream of love by design, and look to submit ourselves to the inevitable dominance of that ever-elusive ‘one’. Which I guess is not such a bad thing to search for; all these choices are driving me crazy.