Decoding Love
This pandemic has made us multitalented. We have become chefs, tried verities of dishes, I mean like from Cake to Kachories and from Salads to Puries. We have become our own doctors (up to a certain level). We even tried choreography in home videos. We tried becoming barbers too.
Doing all these things including spending quality time with my family has made me realize, what an important role each and everyone plays in our lives and how much we have taken it for granted. The importance of spending quality time with family or catching up with relatives and friends.
This reminds me of a cute incident. Lockdown was implemented in our city. Basic necessities like groceries, vegetables, and medicines were available at all times. But no barbershops were open. Samit, our friend gave a haircut to his son. He was so excited to show it to his wife Chetna. When Chetna came and saw the haircut and before she could react, their son Shubham said, “wow Papa, you did a fantastic job, isn’t it Amma”? Needless to say, that the haircut was a disaster. Later on, when Chetna confronted Shubham, he said don’t question Papa about a haircut. He tried his best. This tenderness, warmth, this intimacy is love, I guess.
Love is a feeling; a bond we feel for others. This bond is so strong that it captures our mind, our heart. We can feel this bond or this feeling of love for anybody, like a girl can fall in love with a boy or boy with a girl, falling in love with God and mother loving her child, etc. but……
Why Do We Fall In Love?
Neurologically speaking, the bond we feel that we know as love, is due to the hormones Oxytocin and Vasopressin, which activate the reward center in the brain. Emotionally speaking, to the world love is a feeling, but to one person, this feeling is the world.
“Sometimes you fall in love with the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time.”
You cannot plan and then fall in love, it just happens. Just like Jahed Chaudhary. He found his true love after tired of bullying and jokes about him. He even tried to commit suicide until he met Sean Rogan. Jahed is from Bangladesh. He is a Muslim gay man. His family thought that it’s a disease or a phase. They even took him to religious pilgrimage for the cure. One day when he was all tired from the hurtful comments, bullying, and jokes and was sitting in that condition crying on a bench, that’s when Sean noticed him. After two years of partnership now they are happily married.
For Jahed love came unexpectedly. How much ever we plan and chase love, but it’s like love suddenly creeps upon you and your life. In just the blink of an eye, everything is beautiful and different. It makes you wonder how you lived before. Love is a very simple yet extremely immaculately complex feeling.
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage” – Lao Tzu.
I have read these lines so many times but never understood the meaning till reading about Dashrath Manjhi. The man who moved a mountain.
Dashrath Manjhi was a laborer. His wife died due to an injury caused by falling from a mountain. She was injured while walking along a narrow path across the rocky ridge. The doctor was in a different town 90 km away. In the memory of his wife, he decided to carve out a path, so that no other person suffers like his wife. Dashrath single-handedly carved out 360 feet long, 30 feet high, and 30 feet wide passage through the mountain and shortened 55 km distance into 15 km. It took him 22 years to carve.
Loving someone gives you courage, just like Dashrath, and being loved by someone gives you strength knowing you have the support of your love.
For me, love is the sense of warmth or the sense of satisfaction. When my son enters home and if I am not around then his first question to his dad is where is Aai (mom in Marathi)? When I come back home everybody is waiting for me. This bond is love. When I meet my friends I forget my tension, we just enjoy. This fondness for me is love. When my mom calls to tell me that I made your favorite dish and missing you beta. When I talk to dad about anything like politics or investments or health anything, his confidence in me is love. I have a son but still, my elder sister treated me like a baby sister, which is love to me. My brother calls up and asks how are you? Where are you going to visit? Come yaar, it’s been ages, this is love to me. Above all when my husband asks me how was your day dear, is love to me.
