The question of choice in love

I was on Facebook yesterday when I got pinged in the chat window. It was Mehnaz, a young girl I met earlier in the year on my India travel. Traveling by myself in the South of India I decided to partake in an all day backwater tour on a boat. I was picked up in a small bus and taken to the river where the rest of the group was waiting for me to board the boat. Turns out the rest of the group consisted of one whole family, a Indian family, mom, dad, auntie, baby, daughter, cousin, grannny, etc. Amongst them two teenage girls. There was much laughter amongst them and although I didn't understand their language I could tell that they were on vacation, having a great time with each other, loving one another. I couldn't help but feeling a touch sad and lonely as I had learned to feel it traveling by myself on one or the other occasion. And so I focused on the surroundings, enjoying the beauty of the boat ride and the joy of being able to watch them all. The curiosity of the teenage girls grew over the day and not long they both came up to me wanting to talk English, asking me questions about music, movies, America, cell phones, Internet, etc. etc. But one of the more pressing questions they had for me was, why am I traveling by myself? It was a question I had been asked often in India and I had learned to understand that the concept of a woman traveling alone was so very foreign to them. Not in the sense of the ability or possibility to do so, but in the sense of why would you ever want to do that? What possible fun could it be to not travel with your family or at least your husband, but all alone? I couldn't explain as I realized quickly that to understand you would have to be raised and grown up in a Western culture and from these girls perspective I had to agree that it made absolutely no sense at all. And in addition of course there was the big question to why I wasn't married or with a partner in life? And then I felt it. Looking at them I felt my longing and loneliness for what they had and they looking at me with curiosity of two young people about to embark into a young woman's life. I spent the rest of the day as their adopted family member and enjoyed every minute of it while also remember very well what restrictions come along with a large family and that I had one of them at home waiting for me. That was how I met Mehnaz and her family back in India. Yesterday when Mehnaz pinged me on chat she had great news for me. She got engaged. And knowing what I knew about that day in India and about her family I couldn't be anything but happy for her. It was instant that I knew it must have been an arranged marriage, but in that moment, feeling her happiness and clarity about her belonging to someone from now on, it didn't matter. Who am I to say that an arranged marriage has not the same chance of happiness as any other two people getting together with a commitment to trying a relationship. After all these years of my Western style free choice in love, I am concluding that with a hundred reasons for a way out and a hundred pre-requisite to fill for the perfect partner and a hundred choices for self fulfillment I myself have never made it thous far. Here I am now 37 years old with all my choices and all my relationship tries behind me, leaving me single and with the same dream - to marry and to have a family. And in this moment I envied Mehnaz only for that one specific reason.