Tonya writes to Zhivago as she prepares to depart from Moscow, fully aware that she will never see her husband again, and knowing well that he is in a relationship with another woman. She laments that Zhivago misunderstood her and her feelings for him and I quote the words Boris Pasternak used to express her anguish.
"I have a feeling that you misjudge me, that you take an unkind view of me, that you see me as a distorting mirror. As for me, I love you. If you only knew how much I love you! I love all that is unusual in you, the good with the bad, and all the ordinary traits of your character, whose extraordinary combination is so dear to me, your face ennobled by your thoughts, which otherwise might not seem handsome, your great gifts and intelligence, which, as it were, have taken the place of the will that is lacking. All this is dear to me, and I know no man who is better than you".
Tonya loved Zhivago selflessly and in her eyes his faults were also transmuted into achievements. The tragedy lay in Zhivago's inability to understand her feelings and appreciate her capacity for helping him to grow in stature and responsibility.
A man and a woman in a relationship can grow together in bliss, joy and contentment or they can destroy themselves by their thoughtlessness and carelessness. The success or failure of the partnership depends on both individuals and it is meaningless to debate the practicality of the institution of marriage. If we could all be saints like Meera, or Buddha or Mahavira we would not need families, spouses, children, or lovers to help us to reach the core of our being and tap the wellspring of positive energies within us. We would be overflowing with love and the divine would be manifest to us everywhere.
Until we reach that state of godliness, we need someone who can penetrate to our very centres, who will move past the barriers we create around us to protect ourselves from the world, who will accept us for what we are and rather than becoming a distorting mirror will reflect our goodness back to us. A husband and wife relationship can be the deepest source of reaching the Divine and thereby achieving spiritual evolution. This is where man differs from animals and where marriage differs from the mating game.
Animals perform their stated roles governed by their instinct for preservation, propogation and protection. Man is blessed with consciousness and awareness and his instincts are far superior to those of animals. A relationship which is based on the need to procreate, to satisfy physical cravings and the need to manipulate and exploit another in order to demonstrate one's own superiority is superficial and of a very low order in the evolutionary scale. When the basis of a man - woman partnership is a desire to help each other evolve mentally and spiritually, and to explore the innermost depths of the partner's being and together strive to reach fulfillment, then the union reaches the highest peaks.
A truly committed relationship is one in which both partners grow together and yet delight in their individuality. This translates into a new phenomenon everytime they combine their energies together. Pearl Buck, the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938 described this beautifully and I quote her words here.
" A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love".
Often people complain that men and women look for change and that marriage can be stifling, as one is forced to interact with one partner only. Human beings are not things which remain static over time. They are continuously reinventing themselves and changing physically,mentally and spiritually. When two people nurture each other, stand by each other during times of trial and tribulation, share moments of ecstasy and agony, their bonds transcend the physical and forge links which are immutable. Casual relationships, constant changes of partners,and the inability to commit oneself to each other are symptoms of psychological imbalances rather than a law of nature.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery has expressed this idea simply and concisely in his book The Little Prince.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose ,the rose that belongs to me,looked just like you. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered".
A real marriage is a union based on the concept of love as a commitment from the heart, a silent communion eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. The longer it takes to flower, the deeper it grows. It is an ongoing phenomenon in which the partners are continuously trying to get reacquainted because the more you go into the depths of your husband/ wife, the better you understand yourself. Awareness is divinity, the separation of reality from fiction, and the true longing of the soul. Thus marriage becomes a sacred rite allowing man to trascend his human limitations and strive to reach the Formless.
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