Love is perhaps the most simplest of all the emotions that we can experience in our lives. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most intricate thing to wrap our heads around. As simple as it sounds, the existance of true love is not a myth, yet finding one is tedious and always comes with the price worth a lifetime.
A rather vague concept to digest in its entirety but over the years, I’ve come to see it present itself the same way. But my perception of love has changed, or I must say, matured along the way. Now, I see that love brings to me peace compared to the way I sought for it relentlessly when I was younger.
Our perception of love is molded by the experience of it in our lives, the things we’ve heard about it and the ways we’ve seen its manifestation into the world around us. When that happens, we compare our version of love with the one that is generally portrayed in the media and romance novels. And also with sex.
As much as you want it to be true, and like me you will eventually learn it the hard way: love is NOT sex.
You have to be clear about it from the beginning. Unfortunately, our younger generation doesn’t seem to fully comprehend this concept. And it’s because of the massively popular hook-up culture that is promoted everywhere around us that leads to lack of sustainability in relationships.
Biologically (or must I say chemically), having sex causes you to feel a connection with the person. One of the writers on a wordpress blog mentioned it with a word ‘soul-tie’ which kind of made sense. This connection is the exact thing many youngsters mistake as love and it messes them up when their feelings don’t match with their wants.
If I can think of the earliest time I heard about love, it was from my maternal grandfather. He had said to me one evening, while being extremely angry at my grandmother for not making him tea (because my grandmother had been asking him to get some spinach since morning).
“Sulaiman, don’t believe in love when someone tells you. Love is all about sacrifice. Without it, there’s nothing.”
I was too young to understand him then. But I clearly remember my grandparents mumbling about love every time they would fight.
“I could’ve left her, unfortunately I love her too much to leave her alone.”
My grandma would sometimes say, “No one’s stupid enough to love him, you need to be brain-dead to love your grandfather.”
It wasn’t just their words. My mother, 61 now, has been a problem child ever since. My parents divorced and we came along with to live with my gramps. The 14 years of my life that I spent with them had taught me everything I needed to know about love.
I did not have any self-worth, or self-love back then. My mom has this way of continuously disowning me with both her words and actions. She’s had these words on the tip of her tongue all her life. “Why are you still here? Go back to your father.” and “Rot in the dirt.”
Since the beginning my grandma and grandpa would instill in me a sense of belonging. “If she tells you to go to your home, tell her, ‘This is my home as much as it’s yours’.” They made sure I never went to college hungry, that I had enough to eat. They made sure that I was well-mannered, respectful and kind.
I was seventeen when I fell in love for the first time. I had no idea about sexual attraction then #deadhonest. It was my first day at the university and simply put it was love at first sight. I was, as the term goes by, a hopeless romantic then. And that was then I learnt the value of courage being the most important element when it comes to love.
True love is not for the faint of heart. It requires us to stare in the face of death, knowing that the solid ground beneath our feet is just an illusion and the fear of losing the person we love is enough to keep us awake at night. And this is one of the many important aspects that true love teaches us. To remain steadfast against all hope, to stay instead and hold on, instead of succumbing to our fears.
Losing the right person at the wrong time will always teach us another valuable lesson. The importance of honesty and the fallacy of waiting for the right moment. There’s no such thing as right moment. Every second that we wait for the right time, every time we hesistate to speak our hearts out, every time we glance and hide the sorrow behind our smiles, about the pain of being separated from each other, about the way this lonliness hurts, we betray our own hearts. We are simply too afraid of being vulnerable in the fear of getting hurt. But that is another piece of the jigsaw. You can’t have true love, if you aren’t true to yourself and to the person you love. Vulnerability is what builds in stone the foundation of an everlasting love that deepens as time passes and grows like the never ending roots of mangrove.
I haven’t heard the voice of that person in a decade, let alone seen them, but it would be a lie to say that I’ve gotten over them. A part of me still belongs to that time and space. To me, that person will always be the most beautiful human I’ve ever laid my eyes on because they had the purest of hearts – without hatred or jealousy for anyone, or malice or greed, or the need to be appreciated and seen by the world. To me, that person was a hidden treasure. And only a handful of people actually know about this part of my life.
This calls for yet another thing to realize. We can never get over loving someone. When you love, it’s a commitment for eternity. Even if it turns out badly, we never know that in the beginning. And if separation is inevitable, if no damage is done, yet there’s no other way to part. The love remains. It is going to bulldoze the smooth layer tucked in your ribcage and bury itself deep and just when we think we’re over it, the memories might resurface and we realize that a part of us still feels compassionate towards them. Love stays forever, even if the person does not.
Somehow, life puts us in places where we have to learn to survive in order to be strong. I craved for love for an entire lifetime and I thrived on it, until I got hurt in the process so many times that I wanted nothing to do with it. I thought I was done with love and that I would never be able to give enough of my heart to anyone anymore. I had lost my parents to divorce, lost my best friends to misunderstandings and hate, and almost everyone who would ever confess of loving me as purely as they could, simply ended up leaving. This continuous cycle of abandonment had taken it’s toll on me.
When we hold on to love and it leaves, we’re left alone questioning our sanity and that’s when the cracks multiply. Throughout the years, the search for love had left me at the mercy of quite a few death blows, there were times where I just wanted to kill myself because of the unbearable weight of loneliness that I felt was eating me alive.
But who knew, I would yet again find another true love after a decade of trying to fix myself with tape and glue. This time, I was much wiser, saner, pragmatic and for the first time actually felt happier at the prospect of falling in love. Here comes another very drastic point of view in light about love that we need to learn and see for ourselves, and perhaps test the love we believe we have in it’s entirety.
We need to ask ourselves repeatedly what does it mean to find true love? Question our motives and learn to see things beyond ourselves. Objectivity will always fail your knowledge.
I believe that love transcends cultural, regional and racial boundaries. But then I question myself what does it mean to be in love. For me, it was being the happiest I had been in years. I would laugh a lot, sing quite a few times (many more than just few to be exact) and smile like a lunatic. My days were brighter and everything seemed better. We were two people who simply connected and the best part was that I could CLEARLY see, it WAS NOT sexual. There were times when we would fantasize or trash talk but that was just it. I fell in love with the soul of that human being, the kindness inside their heart and the way they felt and noticed everything and then found humor in everyday life.
We planned a life together. We wanted to settle down. I really didn’t feel the need to worry about procreation because I have taught children from nursery till grad school. I’ve been their mom/dad/nanny/friend/grief-relationship-exam-counselor/chef/driver. I know what it means to love children, raise them, receive love from them. And when they grow up, love them enough to let them go in hopes of finding themselves and become who they are meant to be.
Sadly, things ended. And here was another thing that I learnt. That everyone of us will learn at some point in our lives. We don’t need to be in a relationship or to get married to someone or live with them in order to love them. Sure, the concept of eros (the physical attraction) is so much imprinted in our society that one often forgets the true essence of love which is in plain words: does not require us to be in a sexual relationship with the person.
I’ve pondered over it for ages, the difference between being just friends vs being in a relationship. And the conclusion is very simple, something that is very weird to talk out loud in the open but we need to do it. So that people who are so much confused and scared and miserable at the hands of love realize that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. The simple difference is that you just stop seeing each other naked, your naked selves belong to the people you decide to give yourself to. But this is no check-box for true love. Wierd, cryptic. I know.
To me, loving is sacrificing for the very best of the person you’re in love with. True love makes you grow. We must learn to love people for the souls they carry, for what’s worth more than just the flesh that covers their hearts. Anyone can have carnal satisfaction, but only a few can actually hold our hearts in their hands. As long as the people we love are happy, at peace and thriving, we should be happy.
I contemplated a lot and after years of heartbreak I have come to believe that loving someone doesn’t in anyway entitle you for their proprietorship. We can’t own people. We can love them with our best intentions and we can do whatever we can to make them happy. If I could put into words my reasons for loving someone, I would not make sense, because when we are in love that person is the most beautiful thing for us. But if I were to put my reasons down, I would eventually run out of them and then what?
When we truly love someone, we share a commitment to them, in sickness and in health. We don’t necessarily need to get married in my perspective to love someone for eternity. We just have to love them for who they are and make sure that our love flourishes them and becomes a source of strength for them. This is true unconditional love when we’re ready to accept that we loved someone who loved us back and even if they went to find something better, there’s no point getting sad over this. Wouldn’t we want the same for ourself? For someone to love us, let us have the best of everything that they could give us? We sure want the perfect IKEA side-table for our living room, yet we’re suddenly unable to entertain the thought that we might not be the perfect IKEA to someone else’s living room.
The people we choose to love purely need not to be attached to our hips. That’s the essence of unconditional, true love. We love them for an eternity because they are inside our hearts and we should be proud of having loved and finding someone who has loved us in return.
There’s a quote about love that I’ve always loved that I would like to share with you.
Anyone can love a rose. But it takes a great deal to love a leaf.
Unwritten 