Dear Editor,

The quest for happiness is probably the main goal for many people. They search for new pleasures and stronger emotions, and try to avoid any pain or discomfort whatever it takes. But this path does not ultimately lead to happiness.

Faced with the inevitable problems arising in marriage, mainstream ideology suggests family break-up as the only solution and as a conquest of freedom.

For years now, the great entertainment industry in Hollywood has been systematically inculcating us with the benefits of divorce through its movies. Not only movie characters get divorced, but also celebrities in real life, and their stories are published in the mass media and particularly in gossip magazines.

But not everybody has caught this virus. A case in point is The Simpsons: this family endures all imaginable troubles but keeps together despite the negative feedback.

The show is well established and includes three children - a baby, a girl who is both nasty and charming, and a boy causing countless problems. The father, Homer, is lazy, a loafer and a drunkard, while the mother, Marge, is full of common sense, religious sentiment and truthful affection. In more than 400 episodes, this animated cartoon series has shown that family is the best long-term investment in a deceitful world gone adrift.

It is said that as a boy, Chesterton heard that in the United States spouses could get divorced on incompatibility grounds. If this were the case, everybody would already have got divorced, since, due to sexual differentiation, men and women have manifest physical and psychological differences.

But beyond these differences, spouses should love, respect, be faithful to, and help each other. Once divorce is introduced into society, marital happiness and security disappear.

José Antonio Calvo Baena

Independent Forum of Opinion

Spain

antonio@aplicaciones.info