Enjoy the “Honeymoon”

Wednesday Wisdom, by Jay Jay Speaks

Enjoy the “Honeymoon”

April 4, 2012

Last week in the Wednesday Wisdom, entitled, Before You Say “I Do” I wrote about the importance of your first marriage. The first marriage being the commitment to love, honor, cherish yourself for richer & poorer, in sickness & in health from this day forward till death do you part.” I recommended that each person recite the traditional wedding vows filling their name in all the blank spaces as they recite the vows in the mirror. The point was that in order to truly make a lifelong commitment to another person, one should make a lifelong commitment not to forsake or betray oneself.

This week I want to take the concept a step further and talk about taking a “honeymoon” with yourself. This isn’t a narcissistic undertaking but one that is grounded in genuine, sincere and true love for yourself. Not the arrogant kind of love that says “I’m better than everyone else,” but the type of love that says I will be good to myself because I know who I am, I accept who I am and I love myself.

After conducting some research (however brief and non-annotated it may have been) thanks to Google and Wikipedia I was able to find a body of information regarding the history of the word and tradition of honeymoons. The condensed version goes something like this.

A “honeymoon” was a period of harmony immediately following the marriage celebration. Legends have claimed that honeymoons existed before the marriage ceremony came into being. The first recorded appearance came in 1546 but the ritual goes back much further. In the earliest days, the groom simply abducted the woman of his choice to be his bride and took her into hiding, sometimes with his groomsmen there to help him. This is where the term “swept off her feet” comes from – a blanket would often be thrown over the bride and she would be carried off on horseback.   This lasted as long as it took for the lady’s relatives to stop searching for her, which was about a month, as marked by the phases of the moon. Thus, the “moon” in honeymoon. The practice of kidnapping a bride dates back to Attila the Hun, AD 433-453.

When in hiding, the couple would share mead – a wine made of water and old honey. According to Pliny the Elder, it consisted of “one part of old honey” and “three parts of water”. The mixture was then left in the sun for forty days, though it was claimed that some left it to ferment for only nine days. Pliny went on to say “with age, it attains the flavor of wine”. As time passed, it was believed that if the couple drank mead daily during the honeymoon, they would be assured of the birth of sons. Thus, the mead provided the “honey” part of the term honeymoon.

For those more biblically oriented the earliest findings of what we would call a “honeymoon” can be found in Deuteronomy 24:5 (NIV) “If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.”

Our contemporary understanding and observation of a “honeymoon” is the romantic period immediately following a wedding ceremony, where the bride and groom go away from family and friends to spend time with one another to consummate their marriage and begin their new life together. Usually couples will select a tropical or exotic location such as Hawaii, Aruba, the Cayman Islands or perhaps a traditionally romantic place like Paris, France or Niagara Falls as the location for their “honeymoon.”

What I am suggesting is that once you’ve taken your WEDDING VOWS to yourself and in effect “married” yourself that you must also “honeymoon” with YOU! This isn’t an admonishment for the puritan “self –abuse” but an encouragement to GET AWAY FROM FOES, FRIENDS AND FAMILY to spend time WITH YOURSELF. Much like a newly married couple who can’t wait to get each other alone and ravish one another’s bodies in a carnal sense, you should spend time with you and really get to know yourself on a deeper and more intimate level. After all if you’ve just made a life-long commitment to love, cherish and respect yourself till death do you part, shouldn’t you know yourself inside and out? Aren’t you worth the tenderness, time and affection you’d shower upon your lover? How can you openly receive intimacy from someone else if you haven’t achieved authentic intimacy with yourself?

This may sound odd to some people. The concept of marrying yourself, taking a “honeymoon” with yourself may be too overwhelming and silly for the more sober and serious minded of you, but I contend that these are critical steps to self-actualization and realizing the power within you. Once you’ve committed to yourself and become intimate with your own past, thoughts, feelings, reasoning, strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and capabilities you’ll be free enough to provide love to others in its three forms:

1)      Eros love – erotic or romantic love

2)      Philos love – love based on a friendship with another person

3)      Agape love- unconditional love, a love that is totally selfless, where a person gives out love to another person even if this act does not benefit her/him in any way.

Schedule your “HONEYMOON” today.

Don’t wait until Monday, do it today (Wednesday) on HUMP DAY!