The 'L' Word
Love has
been transcending as a phenomenon through ages, as the most central of all the
feelings and emotions, that the people have known since their existence. Love
has been the abstract form of what has bonded humans and acted as a basis of human connection. Love has been galvanized
in word, poetry or picture across all the civilizations through tales, legends and songs of love. Every
civilization has love in the form of sanguinary tales or the serene and soft
love stories.Incidentally, love has been irrationally associated with the
heart, an absolute simile portraying love as the most central of all human
emotions just as the heart is the most central of all the human parts.
Scientifically, a neurohypophysial hormone called ‘Oxytocin’, the so called love hormone, activates feelings of trust and attraction
between people when it is released in the brain. Is love just a hormone induced
repercussion? And is everyone just dancing to the symphonies composed by our
hormones?
World over, there is a plethora of fabled lovers in a lost
cause. There are instances like Romeo and Juliet, Odysseus and Penelope, Antony and Cleopatra, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler in the west and simliarly Layla and Majnun in Persia, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai in China or Heer and Ranjha in India. There are
fables of unrequited lovers, most of which were later recreated in cinema.
There are even fables where unrequited love is canvassed as the form of love
which keeps the flame of the soul burning forever, for only an unrequited lover
who lived all his life, hoping for his unrequited love to put water into his beds
of devotion, where he has sown his seeds of love.
One really doesn't have to gasp for love and despise
happiness if they don’t get the person they love , for there is love in every
relation and every small experience with a person involves love of some kind ,
however minuscule it is.If one does what he likes and appreciates thankfully
whatever he has, then all the positivity and feelings which bring us cheer and
joy with whoever the person it is- friends, family, etc
There is
nothing like perfect love, for it’s a Utopian concept of everything perfectly
falling into place and seldom are any relationships perfect, or are they?
Love is an overrated illusion, these days, because people spend lives looking for love 'out there', while in reality they are essentially seeking someone out there, to love them, to make them feel happy and make them feel better about themselves, when actually, that love is within them all the time. That might make you ponder; Does love make your happiness and sadness dependent on someone else, outside you?
Love is an overrated illusion, these days, because people spend lives looking for love 'out there', while in reality they are essentially seeking someone out there, to love them, to make them feel happy and make them feel better about themselves, when actually, that love is within them all the time. That might make you ponder; Does love make your happiness and sadness dependent on someone else, outside you?
While the
world’s obsession with Love, will increase everyday, with each song /movie / book
etc about love, maybe a level of introspection is required as to whether love
is actually a coup de foudre. And
maybe the following lines from ‘Fountainhead’
can be enlightening perhaps
Excerpts from FOUNTAINHEAD ,by Ayn Rand:
“Personal love is a great evil- as
everything personal. It always leads to misery. Personal love is an act of
discrimination, of preference. Its an act of injustice- to every human being on
earth whom you rob of the affection arbitrarily granted to one. Love all men
equally. But one cannot achieve so noble an emotion if one doesn’t kill his
selfish little choices. They are vicious and futile- since they contradict the first
cosmic law, i.e “The basic equality of men”.
Love has been glorified through ages, thanks to glossy
portrayal of it through various media- books, cinema. At the same time it has also been marauded by
elucidation, because of the notion that love hurts and emboldens depression
which is so untrue. Its rejection that hurts , it’s the fear of losing someone
that emboldens depression, not love.