Is The Wedding Ring The Beginning Or The End?
Just think about it – nearly five thousand years ago, wedding rings were used to signify marriage. The men gave their brides wedding rings that were made of rush or hemp fashioned into a circle. The moment it was slipped onto the girl’s finger, it denoted that she now belonged to the man she was married to. Why the circle? For the Egyptians, it signified a form that had no beginning and no end – the form that stood for eternity and it was this form that they chose to signify that a couple was married – it was a symbol that bound them together forever. It was almost as though it evoked some kind of supernatural force to keep it that way.
In most Western societies, the wedding ring today is the symbol of marriage. It is also getting more and more common for the couple to exchange wedding rings – so it is now a question of both the man and the woman displaying their married status to the world. This is what the wedding ring stands for – the pre-wedding ring time when both were single and the post-wedding ring time when both become one.
Like the circle that the wedding ring is shaped into, it is very tough to say whether the wearing of the rings is the beginning or the end. For most women brought up on fairytales and Mills and Boon perhaps, very often, the wedding ring on the finger is the end – let’s face it all those stories ended with the wedding and a happily ever after. Like there really was nothing more to say. The wedding ring on a girl’s finger is very often the culmination of all her dreams.
Do men see it differently? Is the beginning for them? It could be the beginning of shouldering the responsibility of a family now, the end of life as they knew it as bachelors. It is the beginning of the roles of husband and father and therefore provider. It could just be the difference between the boys and the men.
Does it really matter? Things could change and the girl who was the radiant bride could soon be thinking of the new beginnings of additions to the family. The man who thought it was the beginning of donning the mantle of responsibility could suddenly see it as the end of being alone, of living just for the day.
Through all this, the wedding ring, that circle with no beginning or end probably hides a smile. It just goes on and on, never revealing its secrets of where things begin and where they end – if you go with the flow of the wedding ring, then your life together could go on forever.
