LOVE

Love is a beautiful and awesome, confusing and mystical emotion gifted to us by God. However, in our fleshly desires we have carved out our own adulterated forms of love , which has not left any stone un turned to pollute the most beautiful emotion called Love. However , so far so good, even as  I am on a quest to explore this quality of living creatures, the findings are profound. As  I was growing up graduating from one level to other I had a very narrow minded understanding of love until I stumbled upon the verse quoted in the Bible in the book of Corinthians which defines Love in a very lucid manner as far as I know -“Love is patient, love is kind.It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered , it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts , always hopes , always perseveres. Love never fails.”

Indeed such an eyeopener description of Love is prone to be  stereotyped as ideal with a fair chance of dismissal by us only to keep it for purpose of quotation worth pleasing our ears and far from practicing it in our daily lives. The love between a boy and a girl is the most popular relationship depicting love and quite often I have experienced we like to relate love and its aforesaid attributes to a relationship between a boy and girl. So many love stories that are in circulation among us through movies, colleges , office , neighborhood et al, Yet I have failed to admire the importance of love often by taking it for granted.   Now I have realized that there is so much to learn about Love. 

I thinks most easily ignored relationship of love is between us and our parents. The word of God says Honour your father and mother , the seriousness being  presented as a commandment from God rather than a choice. I have taken my parents granted for so many things that I never tried to dig into the love parents have for their child , and to utter surprise I have found close resemblance of attributes to parental love as mentioned earlier in bold letters. Its kind of funny that the love which I am trying to understand is most easily understood by the love of parents for their child and in my ignorance or lack of information I was trying replicate the love between a boy and girl with aforementioned definition of love , which is very rare to find. But also I must admit the no. of songs written for the love of boy and  girl are way more than any songs written for any other relationship , so its  kind of obvious that  we easily mistake the love between a boy and girl as the definition of love and tend to  follow that.

        Another love  have found which is rarely emphasized is love for people ,the best example of our time : Mother Teresa. Though there a lot of admirers of her , but hardly any takers for her actions including me. In the Bible , I have come across a very indispensable attribute  for living a life according of word of God :- willingness. This attribute according to me differentiates Mother Teresa from others. Her willingness to serve people would not have been easier until she was willing to serve God from a true heart . So another treasure I unearthed from the Pandora box  is that willingness is an important element of love. Love can not be forced on someone or obtained by meditating or following any rules / mantra. It’s originates from heart , so we must be very careful about our heart and keep it clean perpetually till the time its beating. Its surprising that God in the Bible has put special emphasis on the heart and has given instructions ,warnings to preserve it from evil thoughts  and the one I like says “ The heart is deceitful for all kind evils originates from it”. So even as I have succeeded in  understanding  to some extent what Love means and what it is to Love someone , I must also confess that I must guard my heart from all kind of  pollutants to restore willingness.  As God also says that you must serve me with a willing heart.

          I would restrict the types of relationship depicting love to  i) a boy and a girl, ii) parents and child

      iii) love for people (humanitarian)  and most importantly iv) Love for God (& God’s love for us).

     

     Love between a boy and a girl

      

      As a kid growing up in a generic environment comprising of school, colony, friends, neighborhoods , on  introspection  I  have deduced that  the feelings for a girl is almost natural by default. Its almost  a  tender  feeling  that  find  expression right from we the time we initiate learn the English alphabets at our kindergarten till we become adult. 

     

I am almost taken aback with the fact that the love for  a girl is not something we learn at our homes when we step out into the world to learn but rather its something that emanates from within automatically, the source unknown.As I was growing up , when I began having friends both and girls in my school,it was always different when its came to friendship with girls. Then of course there is TV which embellishes one’s feelings for girls in various ways during childhood. Today’s kids are so much exposed to TV that its sometimes surprising to hear the usual chit chat they have among themselves and parents easily dismiss them considering it being normal. This reminds me of an ad of McDonald featuring a boy and girl aged 5/6 years sitting on bench in a park happen a see a teen couple pass by  holding hands  and  suddenly this girl asks  the boy if they are girlfriend and boyfriend .Then the boy blurts out his philosophical answer leading to McDonald being a cheaper escape to costly things to please a girl with.

Teen love, as it is popularly known starts with Pehla nasha , pehla khuma and as a kid who is somewhat average in studies , who still needs to mom to pack tiffin for school and comb hair to look presentable is ready to conquer world for a special girl he finds lately in the class and do everything to please her . Sometimes this kid gestures his feeling to that special girl or keeps it hidden fearing adverse consequences and if that special girl who comes to know that she is special to someone, she learns to blush whenever confronted with her admirer indicating partial approval or simple demonstrates ignoring or disgusted looks indicating her  complete disapproval. And this boy tries to steal some time from  his usual time from  studies, sports after school  for thinking and dreaming about the special girl who is first person he is going to look for when he goes to school next day. It happens like this , if that special girl is absent next day the whole day is a waste and he puts on a long face while his friends keep on wondering whats wrong with him.

If that special girl is in  a different class, the boy would be eager for morning prayer  where he  would find a glimpse of her . The boy would be excited  for common events  involving all the classes like Physical Training education or organizing event for Teacher’s Day or any special event  where he would find ways to be around that girl without talking to her. He would be silent when he is around her either by chance or willingly  but the girl would sense his presence so strongly that she would be excited nervously with the feeling of being adored by the boy. When the girl gathers strength to reply to the emotions being surrounded with due to the presence of the boy for whom she is special she blushingly lifts her eyelids and throws an irresistible glance to the boy and the boy’s heart deciphers the signals and the heart beat increases at once. The boy is now terribly confused with nervous excitement on how to react and what to feel and suddenly feels that world around him looks so cheerful and quickly pictures a dreamland where he and his special girl are alone adventuring and are so happy for each other.

We call this  love in form of first crush which some of us happen to experience in school while we are learning to take on the world after graduating from school.Indeed , its surprising to experience that strange feeling for the first time might be pleasant or unpleasant. The other side of this feeling of love between a boy and girl is a secretive  love that a boy possesses for his special girl  and fails to gather courage to express for X Y Z reasons bringing own set of insecurities and complicated emotions. He would also envy those if he mistakes the one to whom his special one is attracted to or laughs,jokes or eat and share lunch with and he would try to ignore her when confronted with her with a sense of dejection . He would try to work out ways to get out that feelings often dismissing  with a self-realization that he is simply good enough for her and just stop thinking about her. Among all of these, he almost feels suicidal when he learns that even like him there are others admirers for her and he is way out of  league to compete with them .

So with first experience of love we go on to garner the beautiful feelings of love thereon. We carry this feeling though our college , professional life to the point of marriage  and thereafter. Even we become more experienced in our lives loaded with responsibilities we never cease to having this feeling of love for a girl . Its always on either in a explicit and implicit way looking for a special girl for whom the boy would still conquer the world. Of course this boy comes across with varied instances where he finds  the special one and stops after some time and considers it failure and carry on to another or  takes a pledge not to indulge into this ever again.  Then this boy also recovers from his unpleasant experiences and tries to become more responsible thereafter finally concluding with marriage either with a girl whom he loves or with  a entirely new girl whom his parents have hunted for him.