Sunday, June 5, 2011

Love- Reality of Fiction

All through our lives we are told about the presence of true love. A feeling that will come and forever change our lives. A Love that will complete you, love all your shortcomings as dearly as your strengths. First thing we see, when we actually manage to start comprehending the world is fairytales in which after some very unfortunate and now, non-sense appearing string of events, the princess and the prince live happily ever after. Twenty something years later the question is, is that really possible? Is there a fairytale ending to lives? Is love reality or fiction?
Women have written about this all throughout history. Women somehow feel more positive about this and always seem to believe that some handsome prince on a white horse will come to rescue them, of their apparently boring lives which they are living. Men, on other hand, don’t have the privilege of rescue they have to be the ones to match up to the 'monogamist-in-love' prince who can manage to look like a Calvin Klein model in spite of just recovering from a fight with a witch who suddenly decided that she likes being a dragon more than her ugly self. Perhaps this is the reason why men don’t write much about love in general. Ironically, though, most love poems have been written by men, but the interesting point to note is-when were they written?. Well, they wrote them when either they fell in love, or when the lady (or ladies or gentlemen) dumped them for someone better looking or someone with money. They wrote when their loves died due to smallpox or giving birth to their dozenth child or worse when bitten by a flea who had just abandoned a dead rat. Point is ,men always write about love when faced by a circumstance pertaining to love after some experience about which they can write poems using similes and transferred epithets. Have you ever seen a man writing an article on love just out of curiosity? Someone never been in love writing about love? Well you are now...
A long for stimulating company, a desire to be liked and of course physical relationships- are all the decoys for love. Almost all people like being with other people more or less. No one would like to live a whole life alone in some cave with no one to communicate with and interact. That said we can always have family, friends and sometimes even strangers to talk to. We live in a society where you can put up an advertisement for friends and make friends. These people can also make up the second point and they can like you. All my “points” really don’t make any sense when confronted with the last one. Sex is one major issue. Like it or not, like food and water we (most of us) need sex. Lust is the most agreeable of all the cardinal sins and usually the most frequent one, one is prevailed upon to commit. So is the desire to be in love just nothing but a Victorian sugar coating for lust? Are we just horny? Or is there something that can transcend all of my points and be something surreal, more potent than the most promising mood lifter ever created. Were those man poets really that happy about love or they were just happy they got laid (or were in anticipation they would after exhibiting their poems)? As someone who has not been in love this can be tricky situation but then what do we qualify as love? And most important thing is the current time. For 2011 define the presence of love
How do we differentiate love from lust, friendship or simply a dire want of company? To solve the dilemma we can consider the golden mean of all. It may not be true but in my view love is when you are attracted to someone sexually and at same time have a complete non sexual relationship with them after the act is over. Also the relationship should be enjoyable, people can just throw things at each other and that would still qualify as a relationship however weird it may be. Intelligent readers who somehow have managed to retain their attention till now may easily shout “that’s friendship”. Well to their credit it is. Can love be a perfect blend of sex and friendship? Are lovers just friends who f***?
This article (or whatever you want to call it) does ask a lot of questions, but then seeing the gender of the author, it was expected supposedly. Just a few around us who have found the true love can be the source of the answers and most decidedly they will have different views on love. Experiences and events in life gradually alter a person’s view on love. We all start off with Cinderella and end up either being happily in love with either Cinderella or her wicked sisters, depending on how much cynicism we have built up over the ages. Given all the influences we have on our opinions over the course of time, what should qualify as the correct answer? Or is this one of those unanswerable questions of physics like where did the universe originate and stuff? If so, can love have a singularity like physics has? Or is it too much to ask from a concept so vague that has exponential interpretations of itself?
At twenty three, one may boldly claim the excuse of inexperience and non-exposure to ones defence about having no answers to these questions but as we get older we soon will not have them. To hope that we will have the answer by the time we are ready to be buried/burned or fed to vultures is certainly a lot of useless optimism, but one can certainly hope to have some in sight into this wonderful emotion that has added a lot of happiness (however temporary it may be and however bad the consequences be) to this life we have. At now author claims complete ignorance but very keen to hear from others the answer to question, is love for real?

2 comments:

hawaii helicopters said...

It's a mystery that we suddenly feel.

Aswini Freda Franklin said...

very well said :)