It’s a strange bird

It’s a strange bird: love.

Almost every text ever written has touched upon some aspect of it, we’ve read about it, seen films, heard songs. Even after all that we know or ought to know after all that exposure, we still falter through life making mistakes and yearning for it. Almost everyone who ever lived has struggled with love. How is it that the one thing that we should know about, is the one thing that eludes us? How is one feeling capable of so many manifestations? It is but one ras out of nine. How then does it dominate the creation of all kinds of art?

Speaking from personal experience, I can say that I have known several times, several kinds. I have always been grateful for it, even if I sometimes faltered in my expression. Sometimes it has sneaked up on me when I least expected it, or from quarters that I least expected from, sometimes it slipped away from where I desperately wanted it to stay. Sometimes it’s stayed well beyond I had imagined or anticipated. And sometimes it has come back like a boomerang, long after I thought it had died a natural death. Sometimes it has changed shape, devoid of a reason to stay as it originally was, or to wither away. Sometimes it evaporated altogether, without a trace, leaving only a doubt and wonderment about the reason for its existence in the first place. I refer here mostly to romantic love of course, though I, like each one of us, has known very many different kinds. And yes, it varied wildly in intensity, much of it was unrequited and hence untested, but that isn’t really the point.

I continue to be enamoured by it.

Not so much by its presence or absence in my life but by the elusive idea that it is. An idea that captivates all yet remains just out of reach of many, or with the very real possibility of slipping away anytime, for others.

It’s hard to articulate, but I feel a sense of mystery and wonderment and yet a submission, for there’s no other way really to respond- like you would while contemplating say the universe. Can we really contemplate the universe- its origins, its size. It’s always been there, and it’s always amazed man by its mysteries and continues to. So I feel has been the case with this one emotion that can fill us with joy and wring at our hearts with a brutal, physical pain. In another manifestation it’s the one emotion that can cause wars and inspire peace, in equal measure.

From where I am currently, I feel a strange detachment with life and with the world. It’s like floating over yourself, and seeing things for what they really are, stripped of the trappings of attachments that tend to skew our perspective. From here nothing is indispensable and everything is precious. Love is beautiful as it should be, but it isn’t selfish or compartmentalised. It is ever expanding, and it makes you see people that you never thought you could like, with compassion. From where I am, love comes easy. I see beautiful pictures and I love the photographer, I read a beautiful piece of writing and I love the writer. I see a good film and I love the filmmaker, I see a good design and I love the designer. I may not have met them, but I feel a love anyway.

But I digress.

Even with regard to romantic love, there has been so much learning. Couples that I absolutely adored, broke up. Couples that I thought were doomed, survived. People married for reasons inexplicable to me, and they are happy. I have friends who found love early and have spent over a decade together. I have friends who struggled, unable to work out even long standing relationships, then marrying in a jiffy. And I know several people including myself, who have in their past, that one relationship that has become the defining one of their lives. Which is not to say that they continue to pine after what could have been, or draw comparisons or parallels, just that they are shaped more by that one experience than any others.

For me personally, getting over and ahead of that one was a liberating experience. Having touched the heights of happiness and the depths of sorrow with it, everything else since has been easy. I wonder, in fact I worry sometimes if this detachment is really a maturity aided by the new perspective accorded by Vipassana (which has had a small but significant role in my life) or if I have built an impregnable wall around me to shield myself from further hurt. It’s schizophrenic almost, to oscillate between those two states- of supreme peace and self-assuredness and of a deep, unforgiving confusion.

I’m not sure any of this makes any sense. This was an idea forming in my head for much of yesterday, and even as I sat down to write I realized it had already slipped away. All it left behind were these scattered thoughts.