Abstract
This chapter brings the threads the book highlighted together and proposes that, in the lives of my interlocutors, ‘serious relationships’ acquire the depth they claim as couple relationships mingling into my interlocutors’ lives. This mingling occurs through processes of intersubjective intermingling (a search for a ying for one’s yang), notions of fuller lives (where one actively pursues a life that is considered to be worthy lives or fuller lives, within which couple relationships and what it facilitates comprise a significant element) and embodying of emotions, through which the emotions that are felt emotions are embodied through habituation.
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Notes
- 1.
The osariya is often cited as the traditional dress of the Kandyan Sinhalese woman. Six yards of cloth draped around the body with an elaborate frill at the side and a fall, the osariya is worn with a fitted blouse, known as a jacket.
- 2.
Trawick’s rendition of parakkam reminded me of the Sinhala proverb: janmeṭa vaḍā purudda lokui, which my interlocutors used frequently, especially when they were critical of their peers’ or society’s moral failings. The literal translation of this proverb is that the impact one’s habit has in shaping one’s life is stronger than the impact the one’s birth circumstances may have on it, thus, favouring habit over birth.
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Sirisena, M. (2018). Serious Relationships: Intersubjective Intermingling, Fuller Lives and Embodied Emotions. In: The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka. Culture, Mind, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76336-1_9
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