What is “Love”?
The Oxford
dictionary states that Love is:
1)
a strong feeling of affection
2)
a great interest and pleasure in something
There was a
load of other definitions from various dictionaries, the point being, the
definition of Love is not the same everywhere.
Someone said to me the other day
that we live in a society, such that we are brought up on a false belief of
what Love should be. It is our exposure to Hollywood/movies/adverts/Disney/society
which defines our perception of “Love”. It defines it in such a way, that it becomes unrealistic, and it is in fact unreachable, in my opinion.
Perhaps we grow up watching
Disney movies, which builds us into the thinking that one day we also, will
meet our Prince Charming or Princess Jasmin. It plants a seed that grows into
an infatuation of searching and expectation that can’t possibly be fulfilled and
thus leads to disappointment, depression, ungratefulness and lack of hope. I
mean how are we meant to feel what Prince Charming felt for his Princess? They’re
not real, its fantasy and that’s where fantasy will stay.
When people get married, perhaps
one does not feel the “Hollywood love” for the spouse, especially in an Islamic
marriage, where technically you don’t really know the other person at first. Or
perhaps after a few years of Marriage, the spark kinda dies, either way it
makes them paranoid, they start thinking that something just aint right in this
marriage. Why? Because you ain’t feeling the Luuuurve that Dr Dre raps about? This kind of paranoia leads to a dissatisfaction
in marriage and instead of building on the positive aspects of ones
relationship, one is led to an on-going search which can last a life time if you
let it. I direct this at boys in particular, not because I hate them…but because
in general it is in the nature of a woman to be satisfied with any small bit of
good in a relationship, (I remember my mum saying once, that a woman only cries when she feels she has
lost completely everything – meaning if there was just an ounce of something,
she will hold on to it). And so in the end these boys become old lonely
men who now just want to marry to save themselves from loneliness and that “Hollywood spark”
no longer matters. So in the process of reaching this lifetime learning curve, they
have just simply messed up too many girls lives, to possess the same as what
they started with, the only difference is that THEY have become a little wiser. They
learnt to find the spark in every individual, rather than chasing the spark
that doesn’t exist.
Problems occur when people
try to conform to other people’s ideas of what love is, or what a meaningful
relationship should be and not for what is suited for their own relationship. In
my opinion every couple has an individual definition of “Love” which is unique
to their own personal relationship with their partner. And that in itself is
what I think is beautiful.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
-Maulana Jelaluddin Rumi
