Love

What is love? I have been intrigued by this question ever since I was able to think independently. For I found that even as a child I craved for love and my vision of age and youth was not in its sparsity.

Love has changed meanings over the years. At one point of time it was mainly attention, devotion of time and toys and comics. My judgment of who loved me revolved around who is willing to give these things to me. Then, I started cognizing its greater meaning that according to me were sharing, caring and being happy together, beyond the boundaries of time and benefaction. I loved my friends as I loved my family.

Then something wonderful and emotionally pleasant psychological transition occurred. First time in my life, I felt the necessity of being loved by someone of the opposite sex. Till this time, I took love as it came my way, from family and friends. But this mental transformation left me seeking it.

And this is when the justification of love became paramount. My observation of life for then helped me to jump to the conclusion that love is a feeling that makes you seek someone’s company all the time, so much so that you are willing to marry them. Another definition I remember, popularly used in idle chit chats was:

“Love is a feeling which you feel when you feel that you have felt a feeling which you have never felt before.”

Lot of feelings and love, eh? It was fantastic and just perfect at that age. Sadly today I know that even break-ups feel the same.

And then there was a special someone with whom I could easily spend a lifetime, life being the constraint. I was duly reciprocated and was in emotional bliss, which I presupposed as love. Empirically speaking, I was wrong. Maybe.

At this juncture, in my process of reasoning love, I am left with two conclusions. One, love is not permanent. It comes and goes. Like people unflinchingly say nowadays, “I have fallen out of love”. As if love is a chamber where you can fall in and out. The avid romantic that I am, the idea of mortal love does not appeal to me. That leads me to conclusion two. Love is indestructible. But I am back to the square one again. What are the exact signs to make you understand love, differentiate it from infatuation and physical attraction? I have personally felt almost all known, written and spoken emotions of love but still it seems to be elusive.

Is it caring, sharing and being happy together? Or being hopelessly in need for each other? The first feeling leaves you gratified, full of strength and contentment. The other might be whirlwind in the beginning but leaves you exhausted and weak in emotional strength. It also leaves you so blind with the excitement that you even do not have the time to judge your partner on more important yet subtle issues. Though lucky are those who pass a lifetime in this excitement, for most of us things do not work out like that.

Now a plausible yet quite preliminary premise for love can be drawn out to be in the sense of giving more than expecting, sharing more than wanting and caring. It is not about reciprocation, trading favors, put conditions for being together. The beauty lies in the acceptance of each other as the individuals that they are, appreciate each other’s strengths and cherish them. Who does not have flaws? If love were an admiration for perfection then its existence is a myth. Hence it is not. It has something to do with mental proximity, compatibility in ideas, mutual liking, happiness in intimacy and drawing strength from one another to face life more boldly.

I have drifted towards this assumption about love using wisdom from my years and observing life, mine and others’. But this idea of love seems to be too simple to be true. All the time I believed it to be something more complex, abstract and mystic. And to find out whether I am correct, all I need is one love and be in it till death. Only then will I be certain of love and its nuances. Or will it mystify forever?