Thought #1
On Love
It’s funny how one can believe in love, especially when most experiences make it seem like love doesn’t exist. Simply stated, sometimes there could be just ONE resounding instance that invalidates all the negative instances. And how brightly that one instance can burn. It makes fighting an overwhelming darkness flowing in every chamber of my heart seem like the easiest battle.
I question love. I betray love. I deny love. But most of all, I couldn’t last a day without it.
Even when my friend, who has been in a relationship for the past nine years, has to accept that her boyfriend—the one she was supposed to spend her life with; the very same one who gave her a promise ring, which she no longer wears—has not only cheated on her, but also been out of love for more than 3 years—even then somehow there is a fragile glass house in me that still believes in love.
Sometimes I think, it is no longer glass, but really the coarsest brick and mortar that has persisted through bombings and air raids. You may call it resilient, but I know it isn’t survival of the fittest, but survival because of love. And that is the essence.
I am told and one often hears the same, young ones are impressionable. A kind word or two, and you win them over. But sometimes, in the dead of the night, do you ask yourself—is it really that you are impressionable or is the undeniable reality that you have experienced something deeper than words enable you to describe?
How can it be that the faintest glimmer of a moon-like smile wipes out all the tears—past, present and future?
How can it be that the most slim feeling of being loved pierces and invigorates every cell to battle and march on?
How can I deny love—when I have felt it? And how can I say, I wish to cease current existence, when I know this love is real and here?
Further, how can I turn my back and fall into an abyss, when I know there is that feathery hope fluttering through my being—the hope of loving and being loved?
A very dear friend told me, in love sacrifice is joy—it ceases to be painful. I cannot claim to be so exalted because I do most certainly feel its sharp claws even when I have not sacrificed.
One day, though, I hope my understanding of love and my ability to give it evolves to this stage where everything I do in it and for it—including sacrifice, manifests as joy. I certainly know that this dear friend of mine has provided me with a goal to aspire to and more than that in himself, an individual in whom to repose and reciprocate such love.
To you, dear reader, I ask: is your heart glowing yet?
