12 February,2010 01:54 PM IST | | Raksha Bharadia
With time, you would have no choice but to let love be
Irrespective of whether we are currently under the spell of an all-consuming 'romantic love' or not, the topic never fails to pique our interests. And what better occasion than Valentines to write about it! Scholars, philosophers, writers, poets have tried to dissect and analyze 'love' through the centuries and yet its definition continues to elude usu00a0-- even as it allures us with its poignancy and promise.
Romantic love is notoriously precarious -- obsessive, erratic, consuming, fleeting, exhilarating, depressing. Once requited, it can slip easily into boredom. It craves security and possession of the beloved, yet when this very craving finds fulfillment the situation turns stifling. And so we incessantly deliberate over this 'love' and the consequences of its peaks and troughs.
What if, one were to shift the focus, enjoy other aspects of the relationship such as companionship and friendship?
I watched a movie in which a man on the verge of divorce is shown a photograph album by his father. The father tells him that what the son sees in those pictures are the 'happy times', 'the smiles' but that is not the 'whole' reality. There are the 'in-between' stages, What carries one through from one 'happy' phase to the next 'happy' phase is how two people in love manage an intervening 'unhappy' phase. Very much like a reversed album, we see the half-truths from the outside and judge our own troughs too severely.
We need to let ouru00a0 'love' hibernate a little, thus stabilizing the rising peaks and falling troughs. There is no submission or deceit in it. Try it.u00a0 You'll find greater peace. And perhaps get some sense of theu00a0u00a0 'eternal' in this transient world.
The writer is the author of the Indian edition of the Chicken Soup series, and has compiled titles like Chicken Soup For The Indian Romantic Soul, Chicken Soup for The Indian Teenage Soul.u00a0 She lives and works in Ahmedabad.
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