Love Is

When I was a young girl, I read somewhere that Love is not only looking at each other, love is looking together in the same direction. I thought this must be true, seemed like a reasonable definition of similar dispositions enjoying a quiet life together, looking in the same directions, having the same world view and plans for the future, and living together because they are no conflicts. All my life I looked for this kind of an understanding, and in the process, made lots of friends. Because, this approach makes friends, and friendships have all these ingredients: they have fun together too. But friendship is not love. Whatever people say, friendship is NOT love. Somebody was saying love is friendship set on fire. I was forced to discard this mumbo jumbo when I fell in love a few years ago. And now all I can say is, you are lucky if you can be friends with your love, but you can love somebody more than life itself and not be friends with him. So I have clarified what love isn't.  More difficult to define what love actually is.

Love is basic,love is instinctual, love is primal. It has to do with skin, smell, taste,chemistry, heartbeat going at 100 miles an hour when you see or touch each other. It has to do with wanting to be around that person all the time, seeing each other every day, hearing his voice in the silence of your loneliness, imagining his touch and not wanting to be touched by any other, even if he cannot . It is feeling as if there is no difference between your body and his, feeling as if he belongs only and only to you, whether he has given you this right or not. Love does not wait for permissions, It swoops and takes hold of you, and makes you do unimaginable things to be with the one you love. It makes you drive to where he is when you cannot even walk. It is the feeling of murderous rage at even the thought of him or her being or even wanting to be with somebody other than you. None of it is explained, none of it has a reason. The only reason is that you love him or her.
Love is the feeling that you cannot go on without your beloved. It is the feeling that tells you that everything is incomplete without that person. Friendship blossoms when you are similar and have similar goals, but love makes you want to change to be what your beloved likes you to be. It is wanting everything he wants, being everything he wants, and being happiest when you fulfill any wish or desire that he has, and to see him or her happy, glowing and satisfied with you, and holding you in good esteem. All you want to see is love in the eyes of your beloved for you, and you need the love and support of your beloved at each step you take, every endeavour you make in life , in things that are important to you. And you think the world of your beloved, in your eyes he can do no wrong, even if he does, it doesn't seem that wrong!
It is anger too, when attention and affection are denied, if he or she questions why you seem to think they belong to you. It takes the form of fights and tiffs if you cannot spend as much time with each other as you like, or you feel you cannot do enough to make your beloved happy.  You so want to make each other happy it makes you cry when you can't. Because. What makes her happy makes you happy too. You will steal, you will lie, you will take risks, because ...you cannot live without each other.
If you cannot identify with the above, you are not in love with the person you are with. If you can, this is what love is. Enjoy and try to make it last. It is more important than anything you have or can hope to achieve in life. It is worth that much.

Distance & Despair

In recent years suicides are being reported more and more in the media. It usually used to be men and women resorting to suicide due to financial problems and poverty. While it was a vivid reflection on the inadequacy of our economic system to provide enough opportunities for livelihood to our poor, it was only an indicator of poverty leading to despair and suicide. In recent days and months , however, incidents of suicide of young boys and girls, teenagers to be precise, are being reported, which is an alarming indicator of a deteriorating society. The overwhelming reason for these suicide is distance, alienation and pressure from their own parents, their own families. For me, economic or administrative problems, are less dangerous. they can be checked by the government or non government organizations, but problems that have to do with the society are deeper, more pervasive, and more dangerous to our collective well being. The crumbling relationships between children and parents in our society, is a fast creeping illness that is rotting our social structure.
Earlier in older times, few people left the social structure or did anything which was an anomaly to it, the men enjoying more freedom in their actions but still bound by social norms. The generations in the 70s and my generation who grew up in the 90s, were exposed to different thoughts and possibilities for alternate lifestyles. But the Millennium Children are exposed more and more to western ways of behaviour, and are encouraged to think and question what their parents want them to do and how they want to behave. The parents themselves are now caught between the new and the old, and feel pressured to be the symbols of values that they felt their parents to be, but unable to be such paragons and unable to transfer those values to their kids because they themselves have confused views of these and their own roles. They do not have the lifestyles their own parents had so the kids are emulating different models. The parents don't like how their children are behaving by emulating them. The kids want discussion. The parents don't feel bound to do so under traditional norms But have no choice due to the newfound freedoms and exposure that cannot be denied to kids now. The parents do not want to qualify their actions to their children. They don't want to recognize that their children are individuals and have their own rights and problems of their generations and they might need to discuss these with their parents. They do not want to recognize that their children view themselves through the lens of their parents opinion of them, and their words, and need to know that they are loved and accepted with all their shortcomings. And the parents feel justified not to recognize this. Their parents never did all that. So they themselves have no example to follow in such situations. They simply don't know how to let down their guard and engage their kids on a human level. So the distance grows each day, and the despair of the teenager, going through the sensitive years of identity crisis, grows deeper. It is this disconnect which leads parents of suicides to declare that their children have not killed themselves, it is an accident or a murder. Even in death, they remain in denial of how their child felt. And their own role in pushing him off the brink.How could he kill himself? I gave him everything. The new paradigm of materialism which has creeped into our relationships. What we don't realize is that Things never make up for love, they can only compensate for a time. The present crisis is of today's parents more than their children. They need to break free of this tussle between the old and the new, select a way of life, and be the example that their children can emulate. Accept their shortcomings, and feel them your own so that they can accept them.The distance between God and Man is impossible, who loves us more that 70 mothers. the closeness between the parent and child, should atleast be one seventieth of this closeness. The love of one mother atleast.