Where is Love Now??? Introducing Aarti Upadhyay

Dear Reader,

 

Let me take the pleasure of introducing you to one of my dear friend Aarti who is a new Blogger and you would get to read her more often once she joins the community.

 

This is what she has to say about herself…

 

‘A certified introvert! I eat, sleep and breathe in fiction. I am student of human nature and i love to study emotions. In love with movies and music. Pessimism comes naturally to me. While people prefer to run, i crawl. A night bloomer! I deserve a medal for frolicking in pain and I make a living too. Find me juggling with content and social media. Reach me on twitter @Aaarti27’

 

Let me know what you think about the below article by Aarti.

 

Cheers,

 

Shamsud

 

Where is Love Now???

Is there anybody who hasn’t tried to define what love is? It’s one such emotion that everyone wants and feels has, until the deception wears off. We know a lot about love, we talk about it, but do we understand it?

All of us come up with our own definition for it, but the minute we define it, most of us find it difficult to live by it. The moment you feel this feeling is love, it changes. Try it out, ‘I cannot live without him’… Sounds more like Addiction. ‘His walking out on me has made me wretched. I’ll never be able to love anyone’… It’s Hopelessness, disillusionment, where is love now? Even the extreme statements like I love myself- obsession, I love him to death- madness. We spend most of the time defining love, instead of living it. It’s a phase that makes people feel extreme emotions like happiness, exaltation, contentment, pain and extreme wretchedness; when you combine these all it becomes LOVE. Love is a phase that can be coined under any other emotion present on this earth, at any point in time, but when the node becomes unexplainable, it is coined Love.

People live by the convictions they have. To some, love has attributes of giving, selflessness, sacrifice, to others it may be of possession, desires, achievements and the list is endless. Its impact is huge on peoples’ life, some end up being better off and some lurk in absolute wretchedness. But all of us love to love, if not always at some point of time in life. We fool and are fooled by it, somewhere we get carried away by it, where it’s just a phase that occurs and reoccurs in our life. To some people, it is a predominant feeling, which they believe has made their life.

I have seen couples who claim their love, enter into the relationship, get married, get jaded and then end it. When these couples started may be love was likeness, which turned into possession, from possession to obsession which passed to misunderstanding, arguments, betrayal, that resulted into the split. But if we look at it closely, in every phase, it was the love that kept reoccurring with change in emotions and feelings. These couples claim they were constantly in love but if they were constantly in love, how come the feelings changed. Within just a few years the object of their obsession turned into the object of disdain. Where is love now? Was it love in the first place? May be yes, may be no, it all depends on what one likes to believe.

Unlike others, there are a few people, who are never constantly in love; who have learnt to detach themselves, a bit aloof from the drama of life; they don’t let any emotion impair their lives. They do feel extreme emotions but they don’t get carried away by it. To them, love becomes a phase that helps them to rejuvenate, recreate, believe, share, exalt and reach a phase where there is absolute happiness which is devoid of forms. Happiness that does not need a reason to manifest itself, it comes naturally of knowing and being in love. It is in this phase that giving in love doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t make you count the sacrifices you make for your loved ones and makes you reach a stage where you are true to yourself and with each passing day, it makes two people grow. In such cases, distance doesn’t make a relationship fall apart; waiting doesn’t make a person look for another object to fill in the emptiness. 

No one can consciously reach that level; it comes naturally, for example: mother-child relationship. A mother doesn’t stop loving her child even when she knows that child will grow up and have his own life, he might not need her the way he did earlier, but knowing this fact doesn’t make her love the child any less. Love becomes selfless and even when her child is away, she’ll be content knowing that her child is happy. There is no drama here, distance comes as an acceptance and it doesn’t mar the relationship, on the contrary, the relationship thrives with contentment and peace within. The years that a mother puts in for her child, in the end, are rewarded when the child is living a happy life. Love is a phase that makes her attain the peace within, it occurs and reoccurs but not with the usual drama that I mentioned in the case of the couples. It is free of possession, obsession, neediness and selfishness- devoid of these forms it becomes selfless. Such love makes a person strong; it helps to move on in life. It requires courage and a dedication that is only natural.

One more example of such love that requires a mention is of a man in his late 40s, who does volunteer work for old age homes in Ahmedabad. Every Sunday, without fail for two hours he would serve the old people like taking them out for a walk, helping them do a bit of exercise, reading stories to them. On my asking him what brought him there, he replied, ‘I lost my mother in cancer. I was really close to her, I tried everything that I could to save her but I couldn’t. In her last stage, she was in terrible pain and daily she pleaded to end the pain. It felt miserable to see her going through all of it. When it had become unbearable for her, I started praying to god to take her away instead of making her live this pain. And, when she died, I was happy that she was liberated from the acute pain. He went on saying, ‘without her, I felt a deep vacuum within, watching her going through pain and then see her gradually succumbing death wasn’t easy. Life without parents becomes difficult to imagine and now, here, I am living one…, but her death later made me realize she is gone now, she won’t come back and my life still has some years and all I can do is love the ones I have in my life, live the days to the fullest by making other people’s lives better. Her death has made me a better human being, I have started valuing and loving my two daughters and my wife even more. I couldn’t do much for her so I come here and try to bring smile on the face of these people. And, when I see these people smiling, I feel wherever my mother is she is happy’. Here again the loss of his mother, her absence doesn’t make him love her any less but it has only made him give more love and be human. Love here occurs and reoccurs but it isn’t constant with the usual drama that most people like to create. Love doesn’t oscillate here between two extremes nor does it take some undesired shape altogether.

A little bit of detachment and no obsession with drama helps to make this phase of love last for long. It’s again a subjective thing, it depends largely on the perception and conviction people live by. I am sure each one of us has their different definition of love which we like to believe and live by and all of us feel ours is the best one. But for me, love remains to be a phase that occurs and reoccurs as long as we continue to live.