LOVE

As we approach Valentine's Day 2008 is there a better topic to write about?!
Though I feel I can only write a little,this indeed is a topic of gargantuan proportions!

My inspiration for this piece comes mainly from my JJs(my codeword for my best girlfriends!).
As we sat and talked today I suddenly threw a question at them....how do you define love??

Sri, the wise one, said a beautiful thing..."The best things in life cannot be defined,they are only felt."
One said she doesnt't have it and another said that she's still looking for it(after dramatically exclaiming...you all don't love me re!!)....and the best was obviously Riffy,as she sat nervously chewing her fingernails(metamorphically of course!!) in a hotel room far away,I asked her this question over the phone as we all wished her the best for her fellowship interview tomorrow..."love??....what crap man!!"

So I thought to myself...how do I define it??
I believe everyone experiences love daily...every minute...every second..of their lives,albeit in different forms and flavours...so it stands to reason that I need to be able to define it in some concrete way.

As I closed my eyes and thought about it..here's what I felt...
"Love(in its purest sense) is a state of the mind and the heart,nay of your entire existence,when you wish ,pray, hope and work for someone else's happiness, when you are willing to sacrifice your own joys for someone else...when your lives become so entwined together that their pain is your biggest pain and their happiness is your greatest joy"
So I believe that selflessness is the cornerstone of all true love.
This central theme becomes clothed with several layers, layers imposed upon by society,which makes us perceive our love for different people differently......imbuing it with different flavours.
So it is that fatherly love and motherly love,sisterly love and brotherly love,love for your friends and a couple's love for each other,all appear vastly different.But if you look closely enough you'll find that centerpiece of selflessness shimmering through all the surrounding haze.

But of course like all other human emotions rarely do we experience love in this purest way...when we are so weak that we cannot even hate someone truly...how can we be strong enough to love purely???
Man is the most selfish of all animals...and this selfishness creeps into all our relationships...eating them from the insides until the hollow shell breaks asunder.

People would love to shout from the rooftops about undying love,about love that needs no sustenance,that feeds and grows on its own.
I disagree with that completely.
Love is like a bright fire that warms and dazzles us all at once,but it needs fuel to survive like every other fire.
It needs constant input and effort from both the people involved,even if the realtionship is one acquired by blood.And that too just to sustain it....if you want to make it grow....then you need to do a lot more...and one is not enough..it definitely takes two to tango.
The moment you stop pouring your energy and vitality into the fire....it peters out and fades into nothingness.

But the funniest part about love is that you never realize its beginning or end at the time that it happens...you only find yourself in the midst of it...its like diving into a deep pool when you are asleep and then waking up in the middle of stormy waters!!
And you don't clearly see the end either...the realization comes long after the emotion has gone.

A tricky little devil ain't it??!!

I take that back though...Love, whatever else it may or may not be, is not little...its our biggest strength and most terrible weakness,our greatest joy and deepest pain,our most magnificent triumph and saddest defeat,our pit of earthly desires and our path to the divine,the simplest and yet the most complex of all human emotions.

To be or not to be..that is not the question we get to ask of ourselves everyday...but to love or not to love,that I think is a question we all face each day of our lives...and I wish for all of us that the answer to that was simple.