Being in shape is a hedge against hard times.
Broke, depressed, bad breakup, down bad. As long as you can look in the mirror and say “at least I’m not fat”, you’ll be alright.
An insurance policy of sorts
‘Arranged marriage’ is largely dead in the urban upper middle class strata.
Kids grew on movies and TV, want to find love, for whatever reason — dont.
Then parents set them up. Kids forcefully superimpose a romancemax hollywood love-style relationship frame on what is otherwise a contractual relationship that hopefully blossoms into love.
Proposals, rings, baby/shona from day 1. None of this is felt, its performed.
Reality sets in 6-12 months later. Wife will not play 80-90s style bahu who runs around saying ‘mummy ji ko bura na lage’. Modern bahus care 2 shits about saas. Men quickly fall out of fascination with their ‘new toy’- the honeymoon, the wedding, the photos, the sex fades.
Family expects joint family behavior, couple has nuclear family ethics. Family set up an arrangement, kids performed a different performance.
Resentment builds slowly. Man gets dragged between parents and wife. Wife feels antagonised by in laws. Parents feel mistreated and isolated in old age.
It could have been simple if they picked one lane and lived it out. But marriage has become too complicated in modernity— too many concepts, references, moviepilled ideas, reelpilled fantasies, nostalgia coded platitudes compressed into one private relationship space, commented on and critiqued by everyone.
If youre getting arranged married, dont force love into it. Let it arrive. It may not, and thats your gamble. But people who get married out of love may end up being wrong, or fall out of love. Thats their gamble.
Live by the spirit of your decisions. Not by the aesthetics of someone else’s decision.
A man who is not on fire is nothing. That kind of person is ridiculous and two-
dimensional. He must be on fire even if he makes a fool of himself. A flame must burn somewhere, otherwise no light shines, there is no warmth, there is nothing.
Carl Jung
Hi @lexfridman
Welcome to India. Ive been working on building a conversation bridge between the intellectual discourse of India and America.
While youre in delhi, id love to host you for a conversation on my show.
I think you’d find my conversation with @ericweinstein very interesting, even for your prep for this podcast.
Much love,
And a huge admirer of your ability to express your curiosity
PG
She’s never going to be “the one” if you even remotely had to settle for her:
Meaning if you had even the slightest doubt in the back of your mind that you can do better…
It will fail.
Being with somebody should actually hype you up;
If it doesn’t?
You settled my brother…