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What they say...

They tell you in stories, through all means of communication: internet, television, books, newspapers and I suspect the Egyptian tombs, that love is this all conquering, omnipresent something that gives us the humanity and the patience to bear the hardest life that we have.

Just like bees round flowers or like rain makes someone wet, love is that special thing that makes life worth the pain and the hard realities. Maybe it's my age or my experience that makes me think so- but after the hippies of the 70s cracked the various ideological spheres that we had embedded ourselves in, we have started cracking down on this thing called love.

This potent liquid that made Juliet and Romeo drink the poison, that made Devdas alcoholic, the lack of which, makes people depressed and feel that something is wrong and they are horrible people because no one loves them. Boyfriends and Girlfriends spend whole salaries on each other trying to prove their love for one another, and a sudden realization that one doesn't feel the same way about their partner as they did when things 'started of' breaks many families and relationships.

But this is what I know. There is nothing called love, it is compassion, a fondness, a soft spot. It is a fluid boundary defying shapeless emotion that encompasses much like the circles when calculating probability, all other emotions, like fear, jealousy, envy, anger, happiness, anger.

Socialization on the other hand makes us think, feel & behave as though love is an existing component of everyone's life. Where in fact, it isn't. Because for it to be that, means it exists, when really it's just another word for the many synonyms for love.

So to conclude, no one is retarded because they don't feel they are loved. And no they don't need to go elsewhere to seek this magical thing, nor do they need the help of prozac. It's right there, because if it is really no where, then it can be every where, every where you want it to be. It does not control you, you control it, because you make it be. You make it exist.

At the end of this, my girlfriend just started bawling. I don't think she believed me. And worse, it made her cry more. :-(

Comments

C. said…
'It's right there, because if it is really no where, then it can be every where, every where you want it to be. It does not control you, you control it, because you make it be. You make it exist.'

Honesty trumps most things, and since u're brutal honesty in this post has intrigued me, here goes nuthin:
I will disagree with you. Am no die-hard romantic neither do I find it fashionable to put the concept down.
They say that we have moved from art imitating life to life imitating art and in that context, what nowadays is portrayed as love rarely has much in common with what it is.
Honestly, love is hard work. It was never meant to be a bed of roses and all thoughts to the contrary are nothin more than bouts of wishful thinking.

Usually, our thoughts are results of experience - our own, of those around us, what we expose ourselves to - and we sometimes make absolute statements using that backdrop.

What I have realized is that sometimes, like those blind men and the elephant we learnt about in school (at least I did :)), we touched a part of the anatomy and assume it to be reality.
Even though it is reality, it is not the complete reality. Our views are constricted.

Maybe out there, you might one day see the reality of the word as exhibited in some relationship somewhere.

For the purposes of analysis, I will refer you to a chapter in the Bible (I do this purely to expose you to what I think is the greatest words written on love. Pls take no offense)
"4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance."

Is it ideal? Yes but if one wanted a blueprint, this could be it.

Does the fact that people do not practice it make it less real?
I don't think so.

With no intent to offend.

C.
Saro said…
Mr C, That could be a post in itself! Yes, I am definitely aware of the elephant/blind man story. And while your view is different, and dare I say more holistic than a lot of views that are out there, I guess it's just a different view, or a different part of the elephant, just like the other views that we call unrealistic.

I agree with you that love is hard work, it is like a career, small bricks and a huge building.

I am familiar with that paragraph, it is a beautiful thing to achieve.I used to wonder, and now I guess I do know, that it can never be that, at least not at one go.

I can't forgive today, but I may eventually. I can't be patient today, but I may at a later stage in life. Given the same scenarios.

The converse can also be true, I could be hopeful today and loose it tomorrow. Love encompasses all of these emotions, in time. I do not disagree.

But with so many variables to control, the only single constant in this travel, is YOU. So would it be that wrong to say, that I will be loved, was loved and will never be loved.

And should not feeling it, constitute that feeling of being redundant?

And to answer your question, on no one practicing it... I know people think different: for me, if I've not seen it, it's not there. As a concept, it's very present, but is it tangible? Can I put my finger on the dot and say this is love? I thought I could, but on hindsight, who knows what it was.

(side note: very sane, lyrical & appreciated discourse! Loved it. Made so much sense, even on the other side)
C. said…
Had the time as I was on a boat, thus :)

Can one put a finger on that dot and proclaim that they have found that elusive nirvana? You’re right when you say you cannot.

Yet, if a certain she does think, with a surety that confounds, that she can put her finger on it, what she would be putting her finger is on is not a single dot but a series of dots.
These dots would be characteristics in her precious other that would lead her to put two and two together to make one, pardon the mathematics involved.

If we go back to those verses that were quoted in my comments, all it says is what love is and what it isn’t, in terms of actions. It does not define the term.

Now, even when we love, can we fully justify the terminology? No and that is because of human nature to want to value oneself before the other and sadly love does not take that into the equation.
How many relationships have we seen where you are ‘in love’ and exhibit a lot of the features only when we have a certain degree of control? Possessiveness, jealousies etc mostly come about when there is a feeling in one that the other is not ‘towing the accepted line’.
It’s the inability to let the other be the other.
Of course, I do not refer to violence and letting it continue as being true love etc.

Think of the little things.

Love, sadly, is not all about us. Its about the other.
Imagine a life – it can work if we put efforts into it, imperfectly of course – where both parties have got the other’s wants in mind.
Bumps on the road? Of course, how does one learn otherwise?

I saw Salman Khan once say in a movie that ‘between friends, no sorry, no thank you’. I felt it was utter rubbish then and life has taught me that I was right to stick to my initial opinion !!

Its hard to say a sorry as it means an admittance of guilt.
How fabulous would it be if guilt is admitted to one who will welcome it more as a chance to get life moving on rather than use it to trumpet a personal triumph over the forces of evil and proceed to quote it often as tribute to his generosity that the apology was actually accepted.

Love is patient and patience is a function of time, so yes, time is thereby an integral part of love.

We might have hopelessness today and hope tomorrow or vice versa, agreed.
Yet does the fear of what might happen tomorrow choke us so much that we don’t enjoy the today? We don’t apply that to most things, do we, so why pick on love?

If there is a healing that needs to take place as a result of a love gone sour, yes, that needs time too.
Would be sad, though, if that experience were to shut out the yearnings of a heart for a meaningful relationship where it becomes truly more blessed to give than to receive.
Saro said…
I suppose there is sense in this thought that love is not within, but with the other, and it is this other that inspires the emotion out of- me, the carrier. And by doing so, there is a relation/connection and a notion of amalgamation of two people. WE have all felt this, at some level, with some person or a pet.

I guess more than being sour about a love that's gone bad- which isn't quite the case, it's a question. TO have felt it, and been there and known it, and to find that it did and can end, makes me question these notions of that connection that is made so candidly, on the sly, subconsciously can be eroded by things such as what you've mentioned already- ego, pride, jealousy, love for oneself, distance.

So I now question if it was love at all, and if it wasn't then what was it? And if that wasn't love, then what is love?

I suppose questions like these are similar to the chicken and egg one- ha ha. But it would be a crime to hold them back, because if someone didn't question the notion that the world is a box, we'd still think sailing to the end of the sea would mean falling off the planet =)
Saro said…
apologies: meant to say the world being flat, not a box..lol
C. said…
So what is love?

Is it our need to put that concept in a box, to give it that pat n perfect definition that leads us to question what it is?
In these instant coffee days, pat answers are, unfortunately, the norm :)
Am as guilty as the next blogger.

For me, love is 'taking care' of myself and my precious other.
These two are supposed to be in tension, not otherwise. Its a state of being that pulls one in different directions, and keeping that string taut, equidisant from both parties is the hard work involved.

If we're honest, we would realize that things that come for free are not really valued.
Perhaps that is the reason why love is an enigma that is not packaged the way the world wants to package it.

I had a discussion with my 'mental' friend the other day on why it is that conflict - or different variations of it - seems to be the way that we get our points across. As in why is it that people cannot just look at the same thing and understand it the same way and agree to a solution.

If life was that easy, eh?

So why does love have to be the only thing that is supposed to be like Baskin Robbins, all of 31 flavours and each more delightful than the other?

When I was asked - a decade ago - what it was that I was looking for in a prospective life partner, I remember sayin that I didnt want Ms. Universe simply because she had all the right to expect a Mr. Universe.
Blinding logic?

What am tryin to get at is the concept of getting real about love.
If we cook a great meal and forget to put the leftovers in the fridge and find the next morn that its gone funny, do we question the wonderful-ness of the meal we had?

Sometimes, in love, its us who need to be smart enough to know what to do and not wait to be done to.
Mind you, what I am espousing works for both in the relationship. It can never be a one-girl/guy show.
Will never work.

Ok, its official, I have overstayed my welcome and better hold my piece.....

Am glad though that you brought this up as a topic coz writing to you has made a lot of things clearer to me too.
For that, you are much thanked !!!
Saro said…
Missing your comments C!

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