Deciphering Love

With Valentine's Day around the corner and all the hullaballoo on love, cupid's humdrum, and rushing passion through the veins akin to raging hormones, among all the concocted notions on love are the compromises of various facets of love: infatuation, puppy love, romantic love, empty love, compassionate love, fatuous love, and so on. Love is a constant ebb and flow of emotions towards a particular person. Having a soft corner for someone, falling hook, line, and sinker for someone exhibiting emotional melodrama normally manages to tiptoe in the lives of most people across the world.

However, love isn’t without flaws; it does have its dark side, like everything else in the world. Love itself doesn’t equal compatibility; only love doesn’t solve problems, and love isn’t always worth sacrificing. 

The early stages of intense romantic love or intense crush, being obsessed with someone, heart aches, and emotional topsy-turvy can also create havoc on human health. The mere thought of someone special or a picture of people whom we love releases 'happy hormones', spreading the feel-good factor. 

From intense emotional drama to sweet romantic gestures, it's all about the highs and lows of love. Only genuine love is a perfect equation; it is that mixture of perfect chemistry that forms an unconditional relationship. 

Love apparently has its own language, i.e., a language used to express emotional feelings with one's partner. Various other factors, like culture, social motif, emotional health, social upbringing, etc., seem to affect love and the expression of emotions.

Love is almost similar, or rather matches the attributes, like a pea in a pod with gardening, as the love that isn’t nurtured gradually fades away. 

Love is that faint string that holds the fragile cord of the human world. Irrespective of the glorified versions of romantic love, it isn’t devoid of agony, emotional meltdowns, disconnections, etc. Love is also like a weird blend of intimate vulnerability and a threat of emotional isolation. Relationships play an important role in human lives since they are like part of our survival code. 

Love, dating, building a relationship, nurturing trust, kindling attachment, and marriage are all the two sides of a coin in retrospect to human relations. Love is a universal language and shouldn’t be subjugated to represent only physically intimate love; it must be fathomed and appreciated on a much wider spectrum, and it also encompasses other aspects of our mundane human lives such as compassion, kindness, a feeling of genuine concern for fellow humans, concerns for the nation, self-love, etc. Even on an emotional and mental level, a person shouldn’t remain that vulnerable, helpless, and dependent on anyone's love; no one should be hooked on the mercy of someone else's emotional or physical presence in their lives, as being addicted in such a manner destroys emotional and mental sanctity.

 In today's context, love also seems to have undergone some thorough rejigging as the 'World' is facing utter chaos and catastrophe across the world: economic recession, the aftermath of pandemics, sociopolitical turmoil, natural disasters, the expansion of territories in Gaza and Ukraine, and inhumane activities across the world. Love and compassion should be used to mellowing down social apathy and social indifference to build bridges that foster social alliances rather than building a wall. 

It isn’t the innate nature of 'love' to build a 'wall' and remain a fiddle to a few. Love is the spark that ignites even the darkest of hearts. It opens out the heart for weaving out a more vigilant social circle that remains compassionate and empathetic towards other people in general.

 People should ignite such love in their hearts that they can comprehend every beating heart in the neighbourhood, city, region, country, and world and understand that every heart beats, aches, and bleeds like theirs. 

If only the cold and callous hearts could sense the silent cries and helplessness, then perhaps no one in our entire world would have to remain homeless, remain with an empty stomach, or suffer the pangs of poverty at the hands of a ruthless world and become deprived of education, warm food, and compassion. No elderly's tear would cascade down the fold of their wrinkled faces if only 'Love' surpassed everything. No woman across the world would have sold and bought in a flesh market akin to objects if only the ethos of universal love would come across. 

On the contrary to the essence and attributes of 'love', people in general are seen to understand differently and fall in and out of'superficial love' more swiftly than use and throw objects. 

'Love' epitomised by Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Ferdowsi, and Khalil Gibran tends to touch the soul and essence of humanity; its more tends towards mysticism rather than objectifying love of flesh, understood more by common rabbles and gulps down. The capsule of love like cocaine-addicted junkies.

(The author is a writer and holds a Ph.D. in travel and tourism.)