What's Love?

Love. Wherever I turn to, it is somehow a discussion on love. There is nothing unusual about that. What makes me write is the specific concern about love that keeps coming back. Does it last?

The first one was when a friend of mine wrote about arranged and love marriages. Another said love – the feeling is consistent – but it needn’t be towards the same person. Convenient! It kept bringing back that thought which I fear – that no love is consistent. And no I don’t mean this version of feeling-lasts-but-lover-does-not.

Seriously – cant one love another forever? In fairy tales yes, in movies of course. But in real life? Here is what I read in one of the articles published in The Hindu http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/15/stories/2010071554571100.htm

So all that crush stuff we talk about is an ‘unconscious’ feeling of lust? Yech! I’m not going to accept that. Crush is crush – you like something about the person, which attracts you to him, but you have no idea what it is. And that’s what makes it special. How can love be love if there is logic in it? No way.

Love should be mysterious, incomprehensible, unpredictable and totally devoid of logic. For example, you cant decide – person X has so many qualities matching to mine, I will pick him. That may work for arranged marriages. But not in love. But then again, it might be one of these qualities which worked the magic, you never know. I say the whole concept of love crumbles if you bring your calculations into it. In other words, brain has no place in it. Which is why I wont buy the piece in The Hindu.

But one part they say is about long-time friends becoming a couple at some point in life. Now this has been an area I keep debating with self and never can find an answer to. Friendship, I have always held as a divine relationship and I cant imagine anything coming in between to shatter that. Not even love. I have always seen friendship above love though I hear people say it is one and the same. I will say this much. To lovers, friendship is an added advantage. But to friends, love is an intruder who will forever change something divine that they had all this while.

Two things bother me. The consistency factor and the friendship factor. However much I believe that marriage could put an end to all your “intense” feelings making it a matter-of-fact relationship taken for granted, I still like to fantasize that there exists true love. That someone is there for someone else – forever, not changing faces in between. Just one for another. Now it would be really sad if there is no such thing.