“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved,” George Sand once said. Is this what love really is? This is a question that has tormented our humanity throughout the years. Psychologists have tried to study it, poets have tried to analyze on a piece of paper but the mystery continues. To know what love is one must experience it deeply. It is a very special sensation which is not related to any other human emotion. There are different kinds of love that people go through: jealous or fearful love, pure-true love, false love and romantic love. Sometimes love brings happiness. Sometimes it brings sadness. Sometimes it strikes like a thunderbolt. If you love, then the world becomes infinite. Everything is an opportunity, no obstacle can be overcome. The problem is that most people are uncomfortable with such never-ending outlook. They want their world much smaller and easier to control. They are unconfident and need to have power of every aspect of love, or they are frightened it will slide away from them over night. In some people, jealousy is a present monster. If they don’t sense it themselves they attribute it to others. Nearly everyone wishes to have pure love. Pure love doesn’t depend on anything. One doesn’t love another person because of any quality that person possesses. It doesn’t expect anything in return nor does it await pleasure. It is a completely unselfish emotion; the pleasure is in giving not taking. The more we love, the more we increase our ability to love. Many talk of the chest area holding heart chakra. Whether this is a fact, or only a way to illustrate the feeling in the chest as the heart opens, will always be a topic for assumption. What will remain steady is that to love, you must love, and to truly love, you must love evenly. Love is not a thing to divide its meaning and put a little in one basket and a little in another. Pure love is the most vital thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or breathe our last breath. False love begins the same way pure love does but it never ends the same. It’s never adequate, for it misleads, twists and eventually destroys everything and everyone it associates with. It leads to a break up. Sometimes partner falls in love at first sight and at the end just realize that it’s absolutely nothing but physical lure. Rather than see this as the heart loving entirely, it doesn’t choose one over the other. How we love is one matter; who and what we love is the other, and in this we also make variety of choices. Love doesn’t only strike the young and capable, the beautiful and suitable. Romantic love is only one opportunity among many of the choices a heart has to offer. We treat romantic love not as an act but as sentiment, an overpowering desire to be with and guard our dearly loved one. It trembles us awake, makes us aware of our incompleteness, and makes us crave for more. Once again love is sacred and profane, erotic and inspirational, comic and tragic, carnal and mystical. It has no limit. It is a thrilling opening into an ever expanding universe that is us. As Diane Ackerman said: “Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees what it really is.” It will stand always as a mystery.
I found an interesting view on love written by Nail Gaiman :
Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...
You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
My favorite Love poet of all time is Rumi, he perfectly makes sense to me in all the things that he wrote about when it comes to love. I guess, I'd always agreed with him because I am the same dreamer like Rumi used to be. In his poetry ,and if you ever really felt the depth of love, you feel his words piercing inside of your heart, you feel that twisted maddness and pleasure become one. What is love without maddness...absolutely NOTHIG. I think we love many people that pass through our lives, for some we feel more love , for some less. But there is that one person who comes into your life who makes Earth move for you, whose everything and nothing to you is your sacredness...without whom you can't imagine this life, this is one love that stays forever, both in your heart and you memories. Those who say that they don't believe in love are afraid of themseleves, afraid of life.
and Rumi wrote:
You think you are alive
because you breathe air?
Shame on you,
that you are alive in such a limited way.
Don't be without Love,
so you won't feel dead.
Die in Love
and stay alive forever.
I said, meet me in the garden.
You know the one
it is called Smiling Spring.
There are nightingales chirping away,
wine and candle lights,
and companions as soft as
pomegranate blossoms.
You think this all would sound so perfect!
But without you by my side,
what use is the Smiling Spring?
And when you are with me,
what use are pomegranate blossoms?
My head is bursting with the joy of the unknown.
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell, taking wings, flies about the world.
All seek separately the many faces of my love.
Last night, I saw the realm of joy and pleasure.
There I melted like salt; no religion, no blasphemy,
no conviction or uncertainty remained. In the middle of my heart,
a star appeared, and the seven heavens were lost in its brilliance.
Whenever I read these lines, I get lost in its ecstasy.
I've also read some poetry from ancient times, that I'd like to share.
"Vigil Of Venus" - Tiberianus,
Governor of Gaul c.325 C.E
The woodland's silent smile
Where flowers raise their heads
And Venus bids you welcome
Loose your girdle, come to bed
Indulge yourself. Give in to love.
A handful of songs written by women troubadours have survived and they are among my favorites. The Countess of Die was in love with Raimbaut de Vacqueyras, one of the most famous troubadours of his day. It seems, however, that he did not recognize either her talent or her charms.
"I Must Sing" - The Countess of Die
I must sing, whether I will or no.
I feel so much pain over him
whose friend I am.
For I love him more than anything that is.
But Grace and Poetry
avail me not at all with him.
Nor my beauty, nor my virtues, nor my wit.
I am brought low and betrayed
as if I had no charms at all.
I know in my heart
I have never been false to you
My friend, or done you any wrong
I love you more than Seguin loved Valence
And I am a better lover.
My friend, though you excel all other men
You are arrogant towards me
in word and deed
Yet with another you behave so charmingly....
Whatever she may offer you,
whatever she may say
Remember the time when our love began.
God knows, I will always be true.
