A reflection On Love
fear·less
/ˈfi(ə)rlis/
See synonym: Love (verb)
I’ve been in a certain type of mood lately, the kind that engulfs you at 2am one night and doesn’t leave for days, forcing you to entertain and analyse your way out of the sudden cascade of pseudo-philosophical musings about Love, Life and Loss. The only benefit this heavy mood brings is its ability to force me to read, read, read, almost in an attempt to find a fellow sufferer in the midst of literature.
Then again, it could be largely due to the fact that I’ve been reading (and only recently finished) Alain de Botton’s On Love. Discovering it on the library shelves a month ago was pure luck — or perhaps coincidence, if you believe in divine intervention and the like.
See, I was in a funk and needed to pen my thoughts down every minute of the day but unfortunately did not have the resources nor the patience to do so. A couple of pages into On Love and I was hooked. It narrated everything my head and heart couldn’t work out. What a genius one has to be to carefully and successfully marry the polar opposites of head and heart instincts.
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Yesterday I spoke with a former __ (insert word here; I can’t decide because ‘love interest’ seems blatant and overt, ‘lover’ implies he only loved you and not cared for nor teased nor angered you, and ‘boyfriend’ is way too shallow a term to describe half of the axis a relationship rotates upon).
It has been awhile since the wound of separation was inflicted, and time really is the best medicine. I found myself with new feelings for the person on the receiving end of my text message. The very same person who, a year ago, was the willing recipient of cheesy couple nicknames, an occasional peck on the cheek in public and the brunt of my Bad Day Rants, was now the same one who I spoke to with complete stoicism, acceptance (of fate), and stark neutrality. This change of tide in matters of the heart has never been foreign land to me, but it was only yesterday that I comprehended the situation in its entirety.
It is possible to love a stranger, as likely as it is to fall out of love with your best friend and someone you’ve been seeing for ten years. By similar logic, you could end up getting married to the person you’re dating now as much as you could to the man you brush shoulders with while alighting the train. The randomness of choice of partner, both future and current, almost seems out of our grasp. Some might find it romantic and magical and every other adjective usually associated with destiny or fate, but it’s a frightening prospect for me. Knowing I have felt for another what I swore I never would on I-will-never-leave-yous, and knowing I could feel this way for anyone else after this, is a paralyzing thought. Therein lies the exact reason why I hate promises — they might stop the mind from straying but they do nothing to stop the heart from feeling what it wants to feel. What is the point in a promise of forever after if it is built on the conditions of the present (i.e., I will love you forever, that is what I feel now and I promise to marry you, that is true of what I am feeling now)?
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Should we try to protect the fragile contraptions of our hearts or throw all caution to the wind and love with complete abandon? I’d say, a mix of both, the ultimate decision decided upon by circumstance: sometimes plan and sometimes wing it.
Love, like all other ambiguous and arbitrary concepts, is for each of us to define, and fortunately (or not), everytime our heart changes hands, we set about the motion of redefining everything we spent years trying to learn and ingrain.
We hear of stories of unlikely couples and start betting on their relationship longevity, when we have the fingers on the same hand pointing back at our sorry state of yearning for unreturned affections. Who’s to say a couple who has unresolved quarrels would not stay together longer than one who always seeks to talk through problems? All I know about this mysterious force of nature is that it springs up in the most unlikely of places and it picks its survivors at random. The stories I like best come from surprised friends, telling of couples who have lasted past immature teenage years when no one had the foresight to see their future, and have progressed into contentment and bliss, outlasting everyone who was ‘mature’ at sixteen.
I am not an advocate of loving and expecting, though. We should not be so arrogant nor selfish to assume we are owed love. We shouldn’t allow our views to be tainted by the bitter pill of unrequited and unreciprocated feelings. Expecting to be loved in return for one’s affection and constant care for another might be purely instinct, but shouldn’t the reward for loving be the act of loving itself? I find there is rarely any other outlet that allows for both courage and contentment to breed simultaneously than the act of dedicating one’s soul to another without a hint of an I O U.
