The Art of Loving

‘Love’- the very word itself springs up a fountain of pleasant emotions in the mind. So powerful is the word that just a thought of it creates immense feelings of elation in the mind, leaving you utterly blissful. A beaming glow radiates from the eyes & a beautiful aura emanates from around the face.

When the word itself has such an impact, imagine the effect real love can have on you if you happen to be besieged by it. And the joy of love is not only in receiving , the emotions are as strong in giving too.

What is love? It is a deep feeling of attachment, bonding, liking, caring, affection, intimacy, affinity, attraction, loyalty & devotion to something or someone. You could love an object, a snack, a feast, a bird, an animal, an activity or a person. In the true sense of love, all these feelings have to be in their purest forms to remain unblemished & far away from polluting shades of desire, lust, greed, addiction, possessiveness, authority & control.

Amongst human beings, love can blossom between any two individuals. It can develop between friends, between a tutor & a pupil, between guru & the disciple, between siblings, between neighbors, between co-workers, between co-passengers- for that matter between any two people who get connected on intellectual or emotional levels. For religiously inclined, love can also flow between the devotee & the deity.

The most common form of love easily comprehended is between a boy & a girl. It sprouts through a soft seed of liking for each other. Slowly the feeling of liking takes command over the minds & tries to create a sense of possessiveness over the other. So much so that the individuals, albeit inadvertently, start denying each other the space & freedom they enjoyed before falling into ‘love’. The moment either of the two retreats into the previous space & freedom, the other feels let down & hurt. And in case this happens repeatedly, the hurt gives way to anger. The heightened emotion, caused by a perennial feeling of anger, does even lead to violent behavior. The cases of spurned lovers turning violent, towards the same people they loved earlier, are not uncommon.

Here, what started as love turns into hatred manifesting in the form of violence. The media is flush with reports of jilted lovers having attacked, thrown acids, set ablaze & having caused physical & mental torture to the same persons they felt they loved. Such incidents in society propel us to ponder over whether it was true love. If it was true love then what kind of storm rattled the mind to catapult the same loving person into an abyss of hatred?

What is commonly perceived as love is, in fact, infatuation driven by a force of attraction towards the other. This possibly happens due to a magnetic pull caused by any of the intrinsic characteristics such as beauty, smartness, intelligence, handsomeness, compassion, aggression, bravery, capability & adventurism etc. The ‘Emotional Magnetism’ keeps exerting the force of attraction to pull the ‘target’ closer until it surrenders into submission. This gives the ‘puller’ a sense of command & authority over the ‘pulled’. The moment this command or authority is disregarded by the ‘pulled’, the volcano of aggression, to win back the prized possession, erupts in the ‘puller’.

Love, in its pure form, means caring for the other. It means to put all your efforts in making the other person blissfully happy. And what makes the other person happy is the choice of the loved, not the lover. The true lover needs to do all he or she can do to mitigate the hardships, if any, the loved is facing. True love demands that the lover contribute to the joys of the loved, even if the loved does not reciprocate the similar feelings towards the lover. True love is neither selfish nor jealous.

Love is a feeling of warmth towards the other. Your love acts as an umbrella of protection for the other in adversities, even if it means putting yourself into some kind of hardship.

Pure love need not always be a ‘two-way’ affair. One can always love the other person even if the other does not exhibit similar feelings. The strongest & purest form of love develops between a mother & her child, perhaps because a child, in the true sense, is very much a part of her own.

Myth has it that a man fell in love with a woman of low moral values. The things started getting difficult for the woman. In order to shrug him off, she asked him to bring the heart of his mother to earn the love he desired. The man hurried back home, killed his mother, knifed out her heart & ran excitedly towards the woman’s house. In his haste he stumbled & fell down. As he fell, he heard a sweet voice of concern & anxiety from the heart of his mother, “Oh my child! Are you hurt? Watch your steps my son.”

That is the ultimate portrayal of the real Art of Loving.