Group therapy in a blog.
A Fish Out of Water: Evolution’s Solution to the Singles Crisis?
If you’re single, and you’ve ever been interested in someone whose lifestyle is very different from your own–which in the Jewish world usually means religiously–you’ve likely heard the phrase, “A bird may love a fish, but where will they build a house?” Or maybe you’re a fan of classic Broadway and know that “fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.” Well, what if those assumptions were not true?
Now , according to the Daily Mail, nature weighs in on “religious” difference affecting living arrangements, with the mangrove killfish. This violently named fish spends several months of every year out of the water and living inside trees.
Hidden away inside rotten branches and trunks, the remarkable creatures
temporarily alter their biological makeup so they can breathe air. Biologists studying the killifish say they astonished it can cope for so long out of its natural habitat.
These changes are only temporary, altering to permit the fish to live in the tree for a while; at some point, the fish reverses its composition and returns to the water. This fish is more adaptable than most single people.
Forget the creepiness of a fish that can haul itself onto dry land and find shelter in a tree; this was an exciting discovery. If fish can live in trees, then maybe there can be compromise when it comes to religious differences? To carry through the metaphor, will there be a point at which “a fish” and “a bird” could conceivably build “a house” together? Is this nature’s pro-intermarriage polemic?
Not so fast…
Apparently, the killfish was previously best known for one other bizarre quirk: they are the only known vertebrate (animal with a backbone) to reproduce without the need for a mate.
Killifish can develop both female and male sexual organs, and fertilise
their eggs while they are still in the body, laying tiny embryos into
the water.
This is nature’s irony: that the most adaptable of species are too independent to require companionship. Is such a species to be pitied, or is there a lesson to be learned?
[crossposted to MyUrbanKvetch]
Both.
Modern people have become so good at being independent that we have forgotten how to be half of a couple. Or we’ve become so used to being independent that we’re too scared to become part of a couple.
Oooh, spiffy new look!
OK, content…very interesting post. Maybe when you become *so* adaptable, it becomes all about the adapting and less about who you are and who you were and why you wanted to adapt in the first place?
I hate hearing that “you’re too independent to get married now unless you do it by age 22″ thing. That’s the kind of crap my jerky Catholic relatives (wanna take a wild guess why they had to get married?) spout at me.
Thing is, how do you balance being FORCED to live an independent life, whether you want to or not, indefinitely, with the hope of finding someone else who will end that life? Shit, I dunno. I would have settled down and married the first guy I dated if I’d had the option (he was not nearly so enthralled with that). The reason why I’m not married off, well, wasn’t up to me there. But that’s not how my life has gone. What am I supposed to do so I can “live with a partner” someday, but function without any financial/emotional support but me until then? I don’t hear anyone with a solution to that problem.
Anyway, very interesting find here, Esther! Does make you think.
I’ve seen it and experienced it – the longer one remains single and living on their own, the harder it is to adapt. You’ve set up your home the way you like it. You set up your routines the way you like them. How does one make those necessary compromises when a new partner disrupts your coccoon? Not easily. For example, I know of a woman who has her own apartment, decorated, Laura Ashley-like, to her tastes, which she states she would never change. Never could I imagine a man (well, a straight one) agreeing to share that space. She will either have to remain single or find a spineless man to bide her wishes. So too, the slobs who refuse to clean. The ladies with too many shoes who refuse to downsize in order to share closet-space. Etc etc.
Getting married early does have its advantages. You havent had the time to develop your own independence, space and routines. You’ve always dealt with roommates, where compromise was a necessity. Expectations are lower because the money and resources arent there yet. Growth and maturation, hopefully, come, together, as a couple, as opposed to independently, when meshing is much more difficult.
That really is bizzare. But it says “can” reproduce without a mate, like it’s not the only way they reproduce. So maybe they would like to settle down with a another killfish, maybe someone easy on the eyes, maybe a doctor or a lawyer, or even just someone who knows most of the lyrics to “Whiter Shade of Pale”, but in desperate times, they can do without. I guess to stretch the metaphor, the kind of people who are easy going enough to make a home with someone of differing faith are also the types who don’t balk at a little self-agrandizement, euphemistically speaking, when the dating well is dry. Sounds plausible and mildly degenerate, as so often are the deeper truths of human nature.
[…] to compromise, change, leave their comfort zones, and become part of an interdependent couple (see this post, particularly the comment by 2 […]
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