LOVE.
(Now seriously, WHAT the ---- did you expect?! ;)
Okay, so here are my latest and most up to date views (as on 30/07/2007) on the one thing that proverbially makes the world go round.
I, after my extensive and tireless research into this bottomless pit-esque expanse of human endeavour and emotion, have arrived at the following results. O great Gods of love and the like, it is not I who writes this.
Love, as they define it, is a word with very many facets of meaning. I have just the following to describe it:
The desire to see someone happy.
From the little that I've seen of the world, together with the extrapolative license I wield openly, it seems to be, without a shadow of doubt/deceit/exaggeration, THE ultimate source AND goal for the phenomenon that is human life.
At the end of the day, any human being, irrespective of the trials and tribulations that life might (or might not) embellish its (the "his/her" routine for the sake of sexist-ical correctness is SUCH a pain!) path with, IF it feels loved and has someone to endow its love on, it sleeps the night with a decent degree of happiness/contentment/that BEAUTIFUL Hindi word, sukoon.
ELSE no amount of riches, in any of the myriads of shapes the sold out world throws at your feet, can fill that gnawing void within; that need for the thass in its most sublime incarnation, for a soul in whom to confide and be confided by. The soul stays gripped eternally, at times latently and at other times less so, fractured by the deficiency of that abstract and almost Utopian (till the time one finds it of course!) ideal, of loving and being loved.
Thinking of the "else" case detailed above, the one word that comes flying to me from the recesses of my 20+ year old adaptive vocabulary storehouse, is pure and unadulterated, tanhaai.
How BEAUTIFULLY has Swaraj Kirkire, in his hauntingly wonderful song Bawra Mann, said:
बाँवरे से इस जहाँ मे, बाँवरा एक साथ हो।
इस सयानी भीड़ मे, बस हाथों मे तेरा हाथ हो।
sigh... how true.
Alright, coming back to the fruits of my labour, I feel that the at times loosely used term "love" has different levels, which one must graduate to as one "grows". At this point in time I cannot overemphasize on the statuatory disclaimer, that all of these findings are borne out of my limited experience in this field, followed by hours of contemplation on our all time favourite topics, that are life, love and the near-Utopian "path to happiness"...
The feeling of "love" can be classified into 5 distinct levels, starting from the near-trivial, right up to the heights of divinity:
Level-1 : This refers to that momentary sense of pleasure/sorrow/joy/angst/whatEVER one experiences upon sighting a stranger anywhere... on the bus stop, in a crowded mall, in class, on TV, any-bloody-where. This can SOMETIMES be the seed that blooms into the more proper definition of "love", but 9999 times out of 10000 it gets chucked out of the window, as are most day dreams and other such thingamajigs.
Level-2 : At this level, the stranger is not one anymore. Instead, he/she (I shall go back to the less complicated "it" nomenclature now!) is a fairly regularly featured co-star in the master production that is one's life. One likes to spend time with it, talk, thasso et al. In short, one enjoys its company, and is generally on the look out for new and innovative methods to bring about multiple intersections of instances of the time and space coordinates.
Level-3 : Hmmm... This is where things get a little-wittle bit serious/complicated et al. In here, the magic and wonder of Level-2 is accompanied by the twin-headed, 694kg, 10ft high creature that is pain-longing. To put it less incomprehensibly, the hours of parting seem longer, it gets easier to take offense when it perhaps wasn't intended, the joys and sorrows reach their as yet unprecedented extremes and other such phenomena.
This level is characterized by the onset of the all overpowering sense of "craving", of the "need" to be close to it, of going to it in times of joy, despair, ecstasy, mourning, EVERYTHING. And thanks to the enhanced "neediness", it is at this conjuncture that most "not-to-be"/"one-way" endeavours get nipped, as they quite rightly should be.
However, those who survive this phase generally go on to forge really meaningful relationships. Not that those who don't don't.
Ok, what follows next is, from what my limited intellect understands, a leap towards the relatively unknown realms of love at its purest, most essential form.
Level-4 : At this level, one either learns from one's previous experiences, or imbibes a lot from one's surroundings, or HOWEVER, somehow manages to reach the state where the degree of "pain-longing" starts to recede gradually. At this point in time, one starts to view love as not something to be possessed or obtained, but to be given and to be shared.
This phase may be characterized by a relative dilution of the "object-of-my-affection" figure, which might manifest itself in multiple persons now. One might care for some as a brother/sister, someone else as a child, or friend, mentor, "life-partner" even perhaps. To put it another way, the very scope of the word "love" broadens hugely as compared to before, to leave one desirous of seeing a larger number of people happy as compared to ever before.
Of course, there might still be that one figure that remains the highest in this growing list of "people being cared for", however, the relations with that one person too get eased thanks to the offloading of those unpleasant yet in a certain way indispensable, expectations. Thus, one cares for another, and some others too, but with a minimal degree of expectations.
This last condition also forces oneself to grow, in an endeavour towards independence and real freedom. It encourages one to reach a level where "expectations" are directed only towards those who love us at a still higher level, and being at Level-4 as we are at this moment, that can only lead us to Level-5! :)
It must be noted, that these above mentioned features of this level ensure that the transition from Level-3 to Level-4 takes SOME "growing". That is, unlike the 1st 3 levels, this transition causes one to get closer to the other, but with an increasing sense of detachment, of perspective, and of bliss, which is different from joy. One wishes to see the other(s) happy, but attempts to keep his own happiness and sanity independent (of course, to a CERTAIN degree) of the other(s). This one stipulation is quite an ask, and thus the enhanced level of contemplation, effort, insight and downright growth I'd mentioned previously.
With time, I'm sure one desires for the other to grow as well, so as to ensure its successful transition to the higher state of bliss.
Level-5 : At the last level, we had reached the state where our caring was not confined to one entity alone, but was directed at a growing set of individuals; caring here being defined as simply the wish to see the other person happy.
The natural progression to this level would suggest that list growing to cover all of humanity and beyond. Level-5 might be the state where one attains true oneness with the rest of the universe, and is at complete peace with oneself, because only then is it possible for it to truly love others. Not surprisingly, I would say that Level-5 is little more than the state that the rest of the world refers to as Nirvana. It is the ideal that one must aspire to achieve, and which takes us an entire lifetime and at times more to reach. No matter HOW long it takes to achieve though, I'm PRETTY convinced it will be well worth the effort/thought once one has reached it.
At this point in time, I can only imagine one form who loves me at Level-5, and who in fact loves you and the entire universe at that constant level: God. In my mind's eye I see him as this, it is up to you to find your own Level-5 solace.
May God Bless us Everyone.
May we all find our own meanings to life, to love and all those beautiful questions.
I'm loving more and more of you more and more with each passing day! :)
Cheers people!
PS:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
John 3:16
