“Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam: 27, 1850
People, through the centuries, have wondered aloud, and otherwise, their thoughts on the four letter word that encapsulates a tempest in a tea-cup. They have boasted of theories and jumped to conclusions. They have dug up the roots of the human body and mind to come up with satisfactory answers. They have conducted experiments, organized discussions, pooled opinions, studied behavioral pie-charts and tried in every which way to describe the feeling of love. Yet the same people get boggled when confronted with the same predicament in their own lives. So what is love?
The definition of love is like a secluded island, deep in the heart of the sea. Anyone trying to reach can only come close but cannot touch land. Similarly you can only ‘try’ to define love; your definition may be correct to an extent but it can never hit the bull’s eye. The reason is not your incompetence; it is just that the definition is in the perception of the person trying to define it and perceptions vary. So, instead of trying to do the impossible, lets just dwell on the flavor of love and forget the recipe behind it!
Love is a word that captures the essence of both the profound and the profane. Love songs and ballads seem melodious to the person who has not been in a man-woman relationship also. In fact, limiting the facets of love in the confines of the words ‘I Love You’ is shutting out its aura to a great extent. You cannot determine which form of love is purer: child-mother, man-woman, brother-sister, God-devotee.
You know you are in love when you feel the influence of another person is more imposing on your thought process than your own ideas and opinions. You start thinking in terms of the person you are in love with. You want to make yourself worthy of that person, placing that person on the higher pedestal always. You are always in doubt as to what you should do to make him or her happy and what you should not. You are willing to take the hurt and blame on yourself rather than let your loved one crease forehead in worry. You feel the whole world is against you and no one is your friend. You live in a world of your own where entry is restricted only to people who understand the value of that world.
“Who wants a cynic who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing?”- asked Oscar Wilde. The meaning of love cannot be explained to the cynics; if you have it in you, you grasp the meaning without a word being spoken. If you do not feel the warmth melting your heart, no one can drill it into the frigid interiors of your soul. Love is what makes two persons sit close to each other on a bench, when there’s plenty of space on the sides. Love is when they walk off separate ways, without speaking a word all along, and still feel they have had the best conversation of their life. Love is also like the sand that slips through your fingers the more you try to grab it tighter. So express your love to your loved ones by free love greetings and love cards now. Tomorrow may not come with the same streak of luck!
