Friday, August 7, 2009

The Illusion and the Real


 

The previous post made me delve deeper into my search of the meaning of the word ‘Love’. It made me question its existence and our perception of it. No, don’t give me those prying looks; I am not ‘in love’ (even if a series of posts on 'it' might suggest otherwise). For understanding an emotion you have to be out of it. Like how you have to be calm yourself to understand what anger is! I know it’s such a cliché and overdone subject (love, what else?) but still we can’t get enough of it (and we don’t grow sick of it either!).

Maybe I am tad late in my realization but it recently occurred to me—How we end up loving the ‘illusion’ of people instead of the ‘real’ people. Everything seems sunny, till your rose coloured glasses are on. Once, you start seeing outside them, things start to get stormy. Our visual or rather mental image of our ‘object of affection’ is way different from the real-life them. When reality strikes you feel deceived (not by them but by your own sense of judgment).

In one of my recent chats with my friend Sreejith, where I was griping about the fact that I don’t understand this thing called love. Not much to my surprise he answered saying— “Mankind is made of love, also in its distorted forms. You can’t live life without loving something or the other”. Agreed that we end up loving somebody or the other at every point in our life. But there are these times when you don’t feel so affectionate and hence feel ‘unloved’ in return and it works vice versa too.  

For once I would like to concur with how Meg Ryan (as Kate) describes ‘Love’ in the movie Kate and Leopold—“ You can’t live a fairy tale…. The whole love thing is just a grown up version of Santa Claus, a myth that we confect since childhood.” As I perceive it she refers to the ‘romantic’ love here. For ours is the generation raised on a good dosage of fairy tales since childhood. We grow up harboring this notion of ‘love’ and related stuff. That pretty much explains the culmination of many so-called ‘love-marriages’ in divorces.

How much ever we fight it or desire it, love is here to stay as it has always done. The genre may differ. It can vary from ‘selfless’, ‘motherly’, ‘parental’, ‘human’, ‘puppy’, ‘romantic’, ‘erotic’ and (not to forget) ‘unrequited’ etc etc. That’s precisely why more often than not (with some exception to times like the ‘present’!) I find myself humming – “ I can feel it in my fingers, I can feel it in my toes. Love is all around me….”.

15 comments:

  1. Good one, :)
    and once that you start realising the difference bteween this illusion and the real, it seem not so difficult to love most of the people around! As you said the genre may differ, but then you know how to experience or respond to it!
    (btw I love this movie 'love actually' nice one, especially the introductory scene on airport)

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  2. nice post Dang! and I agree to u bhavin for both ur comment and loving love actaully ka airport scenes :)
    i wanted to write on love so long. I was working on the project inspired by love in that i tried to understand this emotion n expressed it thorugh colours.. will soon put that on blog...

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  3. @bhavin:glad u liked it! ya bhavin, as i said there are phases when i start loving everybdy around feel so loved too....but tht fades after a while i guess... maybe its when d expectation come in!:)
    @pratima: will b nice to c ur perspective!:)

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  4. Its so difficult to write about Love, especially because all of us understand it differently and respond to it in our own unique ways.

    Sometimes we can relate to it; on other occasions we just fail to see it, feel it, respond to it. Even in its predictability, love is unpredictable.

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  6. @nidhi: notice, understand, appreciate, admire, experience, give...I feel these are very basic stages of loving someone or something. You can take all this further as per your own interpretation of love, because it's completely upto you. But sadly when expectations come in, you start waiting for something... it makes you the passive participant of 'loving'... and thats the problem! Ones you have overcome these 'expectations' thingie, it's not so difficult again to love! :) the key is, not to wait!
    @sid: yes it's difficult, but ones you have written it, people will tell you how they feel the same! 'cause except for your interpretation and response, the feeling is actually same for everyone.

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  7. well, a post on love!
    good to read opinions and viewpoints of all of you. I wonder how we all have different feelings with this feeling of love, that airport scene from love actually really shows love in actual.. we all have felt each one of them in our own ways.
    wonderful, isn't it?

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  8. @sid: Agreed its always so difficult to write/say whats closest to our heart! But different understanding or responses shud nt bother u while expressing ur own point of view, i guess like how bhavin said feeling is d same 4 evry1....:)
    @bhavin: U seem 2 totally understand this complex feeling!!wish 2 take sum tutorials once i m dere!!;)
    @Muzayun: Gud 2 know ur opinion too..yes, its wonderful.. yet so complicated, dono why?! :)

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  9. i just saw the airport scene from 'love actually'...simple yet powerful.

    but i guess an airport is a place like that, so many connections...

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  10. dangi u remembered dat movie frm college or did u c it recently...lovely song!!lovely movie!!!
    Dangs u have always been in love with love!!soo gud to knw!!i guess there is nuthing more to life then loving & being loved!!
    i like the style of ur prose,blogger!!cant believe this is my ex-roomie writing!!

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  11. @bongi: Thanks for showering all d appreciation! yes, i do remember this song since tht time u played d movie...but did watch it again a while back... yes, nothing matters more than being loved in life!! :)

    @ all d confused souls: sum text from Art of Living on 'Love', courtesy Sreejith again....here s how it goes--

    Love is not an emotion; it is your very existence.
    All the spiritual practices we do are just to recognize this love, not to gain the love. The love is there already.
    You are love.
    The raw material making you is love. Love is not a feeling, a mood or a habit that you have to develop or cultivate over time.
    Love is your very nature.
    Feelings come and go. We can be in love and feel good or bad. When we forget our center we start attaching ourselves to feelings. We are not the feeling itself; we are the one who experiences different feelings. When deep stresses and strains are removed, we begin to understand our true nature. The heart opens. Then we realize what we truly are:love.
    The glimpse of divine love brings inner ecstasy. Love comes to be experienced in a much broader and deeper context. Judgments and expectations of ourselves and others fall off. Life takes on a new flavor of joy and happiness. One becomes free of the dependency on other persons, places or things for personal fulfillment. We soon discover that this divine love is the very source, the very core of all other types of love. Every cell of our being reverberates with this essence of love.
    Once you've tasted it, you know this love inside you can never die. It may appear to have gone, but it cannot. It only gets covered. There is not a single person on this planet whose heart is empty. Every heart at its depth is full with love.

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  13. I loved this post.
    Nice writing!
    I stumbled upon your blog while surfing!
    Will definately like to read more from your side.
    Keep up the good work,
    regards

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  14. @JSincro: Thanks. Glad u enjoyed reading!!

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