It Happens Every Seven Years

So, I got to thinking about this after reading a post at Frog and Toad are Friends entitled Don't Marry a Jerk. Well, actually, it wasn't much of a post, because blogger Beck deleted it because someone had written to her that it was hurtful. She just left the most basic part of it up, promising to rewrite it in the future and repost.

Way to make me totally curious about what she'd written!

She ended her mostly-deleted post by asking this question:
What are you saying (or what will you say) to your kids about having a good marriage later on?

I read the comments. Some very good stuff there. Lots about the importance of communication and appreciation. I found myself nodding in agreement to most of it.

But you know, sometimes despite people's best efforts, they grow apart. I was reminded of a play I saw years ago, Force of Nature. Professor X and I were observing our annual pilgrimage to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2000. Playwright Steven Dietz' publisher provided this synopsis:

A play of extravagant romance and combustible desire, FORCE OF NATURE brings together the "perfect couple"—Edward and Charlotte—with two persons from their past: a beautiful young woman and an older man, Edward's best friend. Beneath the placid exteriors of their lives, a storm is awakening—a rush of dangerous passions which shall alter their lives forever. Freely adapted from Goethe's Elective Affinities , FORCE OF NATURE is a lush, eloquent drama about the consequences of desire and the power of destiny.

One review of the play explained

The play takes its name from Goethe's question whether such human artifacts as dams (or marriage) can contain such forces of nature as flooding streams (or flooding passions). James Edmundson, the director ..., has transformed this into a lyrical dance of words and a minuet of interactions accompanied by Schubert's sonorous piano and strings.

There's a good review of the play here from when it was put on a few years later in San Francisco, which notes:

Force of Nature discusses many ideas that must have shocked the German public 200 years ago, such as destiny, free will and the fickleness of the heart.

I actually don't remember much about the play besides the fact that excellent actors Robin Goodrin Nordli and Michael Elich were in it. And that I thought of some married friends who were struggling with the aftermath of his adulterous affair. But there were some lines of dialogue that have stayed with me. One of the characters talked about how people change. How they become a completely different person every seven years. Maybe you've heard that - that our bodies' cells cycle out at different rates, but like a snake shedding its skin, by the end of seven years, we've rid ourselves of all the old stuff. We're totally different people! I mean, it's one thing to say that a married couple can grow apart, but this is a real twist on that. It gives an entirely new meaning to the expression "You're not the person I married."

Heh.

I wanted to end our sermon for today with an exciting popular culture reference, maybe even a clip of a movie or music. The Seven Year Itch? Nah, too obvious. You've Changed by Billie Holliday? A youtube search yielded this.




I'm unfamiliar with the German Euro-trance band, Groove Coverage. But I think the video is a real kick. And the song has a nice beat; it's good to dance to.

I give it a 7.