What’s Love Got to Do with It? Is being in love more about yourself than the other person?
Have you ever been in love or are you in love? It is said to be the most wonderfully uplifting emotion.
Yesterday, I was listening to a friend of mind going on and on about the expectations she had from her boyfriend who she calls the ‘love’ of her life…I asked her why she had so many expectations from this person. Her answer was, “why should I continue to love him if he can’t make me happy?”.
I was stumped, confused, and didn’t know what to say. She is my friend, and I will always be supportive but the feeling she has for her boyfriend…can it be called ‘Love’?
Are we using this word correctly?
Does the emotion of love have anything to do with the other person? Isn’t it something you feel inside you? Can you expect a person to change who they are for you or agree with you all the time? Why do we expect the other person to go over the mountains and catch the moon and the stars? Wouldn’t it be more liberating to be happy with each other regardless?
There is a need for a DISCLAIMER here for the married ones- I am not talking about daily chores and contribution to the household responsibility in a marriage. That’s totally different! There are things you got to do when you got to do! There are promises and contracts involved. It is legal and binding 😊.
I am talking about the feeling of being in love which so many of the great poets and authors have tried to capture in words.
My favourite quote on love is from Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. It is the one which makes me smile each time I read it.
“Having begun to love you, I love you for ever — in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself.”
Some have described love as something so alive that it makes them lose their sanity. For them love is all consuming and one has no control over anything anymore. Like Homer in Iliad says,
…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible — magic to make the sanest man go mad.”
On the other hand, we have a more magically real Gabriel García Márquez who feels,
“It’s enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”
And like Leo Tolstoy holds in Anne Karenina,
“I’ve always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
Whatever said and done, the whole world wants to be in love! No matter what they go through for love, I have not come across anyone who says they don’t want to be in love.
“It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
To be honest, I feel the vast majority wants someone to be in love with them. They want to be the object of affection and passion. They equate being in love with loss of power in a relationship. They want to be worshipped and put on a pedestal and be treated with awe and admiration. And then, when the awe and admiration wane off, all that’s left is emptiness.
Is that really love or just our own aspiration, our want and desire? Does it have anything to do with love?
Is that why emotions in unrequited love never wane off? We free the other person completely and the feeling stays inside us, making us warm and fuzzy forever.
Or is this why when you are away from your love for far too long …the seemingly unending separation…memories build up, aches heighten your senses, and a familiar melody, a tune that resonates deep translate into words soon…
I waited for you in earnest…
Stories I read, tales I spun in my dreams,
The love I felt growing each day in anticipation…
The day my eyes fell upon you; I knew…
Like a moth that flies towards the flame,
The snowflake that falls on your fingertips for warmth alone,
I forgot the world around
I leapt for you with all I had
Pure joy lifting me up, raising me above silly ruses…
Against aches that held me ransom to worldly values
All the love…only love…
Bliss… love… if this is what it is
Little the rest matters,
I will shine bright as the fading star that leaves the sky forlorn
again, and again…
to set my eyes upon true love.
…
Whatever. What do I know, anyway. Only as far as I know…
Do you have any ideas on love?
What’s your favourite quote on love?
The above poem titled ‘Love at First Sight’ is my own and previously published on my personal blog Only As Far I Know, July 2020.
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