About twenty three months back I wrote about love. A friend I mentioned found love to be a mere manifestation of the human psyche. He wasn’t ‘in love’ then. I was. Now, he’s ‘in love’. I’m not. Now he believes in love. He thinks ‘falling in love’ is real. I don’t. The table has turned. One’s belief in something changes with situation.
I still believe in the platonic aspect of love – that love is having unconditional affection for someone. Nevertheless, ‘unconditional affection’ seems oxymoronic. It is so difficult to be affectionate without condition. You love someone without a condition, without a purpose? You love someone and don’t want anything?
Let’s take some examples. Your parents love you unconditionally (in most cases). They love you for what you are, even if you aren’t exactly what they want you to be. However, do they love you without wanting to fulfill their desire of seeing you happy, which in turn makes them happy? Would they love you as an unhappy, discontented, displeased person? Is it not that they want you to be happy, rather to genuinely appear happy to them?
The same applies to friends, siblings, etc.
Coming to the girlfriend-boyfriend love, what’s the difference? If you’re committed, you love your girlfriend/boyfriend. You want her/him to be happy. You are ready to do anything (well, almost) to achieve that end. However, would you love to see your girlfriend/boyfriend unhappy, discontented, and displeased?
We want our loved ones to be happy. We are ready to move mountains for that. But do we really want them happy, or do we want them to appear genuinely happy to us? How do we know what actually makes them happy? We assume that what we think will make them happy will actually make them happy. In an effort to achieve this, we try to change them to what we would like them to be, because we think that is what is best for them. But who are we to decide what is best for them? They are living individuals, not programmed robots. Sometimes we are more experienced, but the lesson learnt from the experience does not necessarily apply to our loved ones.
This is what leads to ‘generation gap’. This is what leads to interference in our ‘loved’ ones’ lives.
In other words, we don’t love people. We love what we want them to be. Truly unconditional affection is rare.
