Family honor code

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

In the 1930s, James Thurber published the War of the Sexes cartoon series, which featured strange and extremely unfriendly women devouring helpless men. In general, articles, books and essays that consider the relationship between a man and a woman as a military foothold are innumerable. If you think about it, then there really is a small ministry of defense hidden in each of us. Ready to attack on demand. We are afraid of losing ourselves in a partner. We are afraid of the pain he might cause. And, of course, we are ready to defend ourselves. And in war as in war: there must be rules.

Once upon a time, a class of warriors was formed in Japan. Over time, their worldview was formalized into an unwritten code of conduct called "bushido" … It was the code of conduct for the "ideal" warrior.

Bushido in translation means "the way of the samurai, the warrior" ("bushi" - the warrior, "do" - the way). In addition, the word "before" is also translated as "morality", this concept is similar to the Chinese "Tao". Hence, bushido - it is also a "moral and ethical" code. Which you can try to apply not only to distant Japanese realities, but also to the usual everyday life of family life.

It should be noted that the samurai were mainly concerned with how to meet their death with dignity. For a family, death is a divorce.

1. "True courage is to live when it is right to live, and to die when it is right to die."

First thought from the code bushido, which must be cast in gold letters on the doors of all registry offices. If in a family all its members feel good and comfortable, if the pluses outweigh the minuses, if at home - harmony and order - it is legitimate to live. If you torment each other, you don't want to go home in the evenings, and you prefer coffee with a friend to your husband's company - you need to show courage and admit that the death of this relationship will be beneficial for everyone.

2. "One should go to death with a clear consciousness of what the samurai should do and what humiliates his dignity."

The thought from the previous paragraph continues. So the decision has been made. Now you need to let it pass through yourself and, without humiliating either your dignity or the dignity of your partner, at least start a conversation. By the way, in no case should you disperse during a quarrel. Even if you made the decision to break up before her. To use a quarrel as an excuse - even more so.

3. "You should weigh every word and invariably ask yourself whether what you are about to say is true."

No comments.

4. "It is necessary to be moderate in food and avoid licentiousness."

Well, yes, that's right. Wives love the cubes on their husbands' bellies. Husbands love slender legs and tight-bodied wives. It is even strange to talk about promiscuity and its influence on relationships.

5. "In everyday affairs, remember death and keep this word in your heart."

If every day you remember that you can lose your loved one, who is so dear and who is so close now, then this loss may not happen. Memento mori …

6. “Respect the 'trunk and branches' rule. To forget it means never to comprehend virtue, and a person who neglects the virtue of filial piety is not a samurai. Parents are the trunk of a tree, children are its branches."

There are Japanese warriors in bushido in general, they directly dictate to us the rules of behavior within the family. And quite rightly, which is typical.

7."If a samurai happens to lose a battle in a war and has to lay down his head, he should proudly say his name and die with a smile without humiliating haste."

The ability to admit your mistakes and ask for forgiveness is a quality that is very difficult to overestimate in family life.

8. “He who possesses only brute strength is not worthy of the title of samurai. Apart from the necessity of studying the sciences, the warrior must use his leisure time for practicing poetry and comprehending the tea ceremony."

Yea Yea. And he is also obliged to learn to cook, to give flowers not only on holidays and to treat his wife's mother as a suzerain, never going to bed with his feet in the direction of her residence.

9. "A samurai can build a modest tea pavilion near his home, in which new kakemono paintings, modern modest cups and a lacquered ceramic teapot are to be used."

And generally build a nest. Together with the second half.

10. "Loyalty, justice and courage are the three natural virtues of a samurai."

Add a couple more to taste. Although, it seems to me, these three may really be enough.

You can say: we do not live in Japan, the times of the samurai are long gone and the family is not a war. It's like that. Only it seems to me that the relationship between a man and a woman has not changed much since that time. And the reasons for contention in all countries are similar. But the divorce statistics are very different. Japan has some of the lowest numbers in the world. The divorce rate does not exceed 20-25 here. For comparison, according to data for 2003, a third of spouses are divorced in France, and more than half in the United States.

Yes, it says something.