Monday, November 12, 2007

Long time back I had read it in a piece given in reader’s digest… a sort of definition for love… though not complete in it self it captures a very important essence dat shud be desirable, only if understood…

I do my thing,
You do your thing,
Im not in this world
To live up to your expectations,
You are not in this world
To live up to mine.
You are you
And I am I.
Yet if we find each other
It will be beautiful.

Such a definition was invited wid utmost delight as what I had seen people around me calling as love had made the word seem really meaningless. But like everyone having experienced at some point of time in their life a vision of the loftiest and most idealistic conditions of existence, and when they failed to find it in the world around, they give up resorting to the word- ‘practicality’.

Love- an emotion considered being omnipotent, if not in anything else people definitely have a vision of the idealistic in this particular emotion. People who love will almost go to any extent for the object of love. The desire and passion is immense. And then like all other emotions this too makes you the subject of failure and pain, and most acutely so. A description of such a pain given very lucidly in graphic novel ‘Sandman’ explains it as follows-

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life. You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'Maybe we should just be friends' or 'How very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

Why we fall in an abyss like this is because in the first place we saw in a flash the beauty that love can bring. No matter how often we turn our minds and hearts away, or how stubbornly we refuse to believe in its magic- distantly we feel true love exists. Everyone wants it, even those who claim to have given up hope. Probably this is one desire which no one can escape. Yet most of us go to our graves with no experience of this true love. Most of us have not been raised in homes where we have seen two deeply loving grown folks talking together. We do not see this in movies or television. what we see is romance- which comes as a substitution for love with a need to sustain our fantasy. Yes, we name that vision of true love as ‘fantasy’. The vision falls short when we choose to believe that we ‘fall in love’, that we lack choice and decision when choosing a partner, the chemistry is overwhelming- it takes control. Blame it all on love!!

But I have never known a love like that. I have never known a love that taught me to escape the responsibility to be liable for my own feelings and emotions. True love is definitely hard to find. Because very few understand the importance to be true to themselves in the first place. The result is a series of masquerading to hide your true self, and put forward the one you think will be appealing to the partner. We must be careful against a thing like that, specially when we choose to love as that and solely that leads to the unfullfilled vision of love that we so desire to achieve. In the aforementioned defination of love when we say- ‘I am I’ we must know the ‘I’ we are talking about throughly without any sacrifice being made with the ‘I’. Then and only then can we know the ‘you’ with clarity. And then and then alone can love bloom in the real sense. Love is not co-operation, love is not sacrifice, love is not harmony, love is a selfish feeling which shows you the road to the highest in you. The rest will follow. The relationship that we have with our beloved is actually a relatioship with one’s self. That’s why love is known as a personal revolution… “love is letting go of fear”!! some say love wanes, it goes away with time

Another aspect of love that makes love unattainable is its independence from words or physical forms of expressions such as a touch. A touch only augments love when supplemented by intimate feelings. In the other case we are not seeking love but sense gratification- we must acknowlege it then and there . “Its only words and words are all I have to take your heart away” the lyrics from a very famous song by the boyzone which is so very popular among the youth. How I abhor these words!!Words have no place where true love exists. Words are mere fillers, when you cant feel something strongly, words come handy. It helps you fool yourself and others around you. I always feel a terrible lump in my throat when I am ovewhelmed with any emotion and more so with love. I struggle to express and fumble and say something stupid ( on a personal note, this would have been extremly romantic had the situation then not been so grave.) the language of love is pure feeling, cause most of the time words are too meagre to portray or bring out the essence of any extreme emotion. Before I used to see inexpression as a shortcoming as people could hardly understand what I felt and conjured up whatever they wished. But I learned fast… how can I give rights to people who cant understand themselves to pass judgements on what I think and feel. What can be utterly painful in this is when your beloved whom you trust enough to open your heart up to, whom you think understands your inexpression, as that is the greatest gift one can give to a beloved… atleast it makes you sure the feelings are intense and genuine, well he fails to understand and see this. Probably the whole thing did fall short of something on someone’s part. Break-ups can be very painful, specially when you know what you feel and you wonder did he never even got a glimpse of it… but ofcourse, you can’t blame or deny what you felt, specially when it was so profound and immaculate. Your friends ask you to get over it… probably they are used to it… but I laugh- u mean ur asking me to get over my self…??... ‘incurable optimist’ my friends say!!

3 comments:

ADG said...

Brilliant my friend, though am not sure abt what to make of "expressing" one's feelings & all, like yur reference to that Boyzone song....

"love is a selfish feeling which shows you the road to the highest in you"... some call it an Elightened-Selfishness, coz yur Self is now oriented in ways of the Other!

And yes, I know that all too well when u say: "Your friends ask you to get over it… probably they are used to it… but I laugh- u mean ur asking me to get over my self"... yes, to "get over one's self", and so one is never the same after one has experienced love, its like seeing the see for the first time, one knows life will never be the same, esp when for the very first time u experience somewhat of a genuine feeling of care & affection (call it 'love' or whatever) towards another.

Btw, that Sandman reference reminded of my fav prologue from CROW, where its called to be a personal love letter... u like that one?

And that poem at the beginning did remind me of one of Bjork's songs, called "Possibly Maybe"... it goes something like this: -

Your flirt finds me out
teases the crack in me
smittens me with hope

possibly maybe probably love

as much as i definitely enjoy solitude
i wouldn't mind perhaps
spending little time with you
sometimes
sometimes

possibly maybe probably love

(Anyways, i speak too much...lol!)

anusha said...

well probably im not that well read as you, but you sound pretty intense and i like intense ppl... though this is not the best i could do with this topic but nice to see dat we share views as i dont know many and would like to... maybe i could learn a few things from ya!!... whatever i write is the voice of experience and interpretations... intellectual stimulation is all i need!!

ADG said...

Hi,
I had emailed my response to u... did u get it?

Regards,
anuj: D.