The Art Of Pulling The Plug
Ever tried eating a tablet that’s in a box unused for months? Ever tried digging out a pack of milk after ages from the fridge? What is it that you notice first? Its expiry date, right? In this consumeristic world everything that we see around has an expiry date. The people we meet, the food we eat, the job we do, everything has an expiry date. It would be foolish to assume that the relationships we build across the span of our life are going to be eternal. Nothing is eternal in this world. Not even the sunshine. This reminds me of the famous song “ November Rain”, by the band “ Guns and Roses” that says
Nothin’ lasts forever
And we both know hearts can change
And it’s hard to hold a candle
In the cold November rain
We’ve been through this such a long long time
Just tryin’ to kill the pain, oo yeah
But love is always coming and love is always going
And no one’s really sure who’s lettin’ go today
Walking away
.
.
.
.
Do you need some time on your own
Do you need some time all alone
Everybody needs some time
On their own
Don’t you know you need some time all alone
I know it’s hard to keep an open heart
When even friends seem out to harm you
But if you could heal a broken heart
Wouldn’t time be out to charm you
Pulling the plug is an art. In every relationship one comes across in life, which one creates voluntarily, one should be prepared to pull the plug at some point of time. Only the luckier ones get an opportunity to let the relationship stay till their death without pulling the plug. Love is like a mirage, where only a lucky few discover water. For most, it’s just a reflection in a hot summer, where you keep on walking endlessly expecting to get a droplet of water. Don’t. It’s a trap.
Ever wondered who you are, in terms of the job you do and why are you here doing what you are doing. Love makes us complete, is a myth. Nothing makes us complete other than death. Eternal love is a myth. You don’t love someone till eternity, you just learn to control getting carried away. You control your desires and emotions for someone else, because the feeling of falling in love again fills you with guilt. That’s what you have been taught to do. Who doesn’t love feeling loved! But at what price! At the price of your freedom! At the price of your dignity! Or at the price of other relationships!
Love is a universal feeling of expansion. In the process of creating one relationship if you are severing three, is that even worth it. The world needs love to feel loved not to be dictated by territorial rules or selfish desires. We all are judged, judgement is a part of our life. It’s just how we cope up with the verdict of our own judgement, matters. People who love you might not like an act or a set of acts that you do , based on some unlikeable act of yours, you are going to be judged, that’s absolutely fine but to what extent do they affect their behavior. That judgement has no right to make the other person behave awfully to you, simply because the judgement puts your intention and character in a questionable place. If they love you, they will love you anyway, without being affected by judgements, even if they mean sharing you with the world or sharing your time or losing you forever. They will just love you without getting mad at you when their conditions are not fulfilled. Isn’t love supposed to be unconditional!
Can it be even called love, when your partner gets angry and mad when things doesn’t go the way you two planned! I feel a partner can become angry on another partner only when he or she misbehaves with a fellow human being or does somethings that threatens his/her own life or the life of a fellow human being. Apart from that, there is no reason your partner should be mad at you for anything you do. And if they do, would it make your love qualify as unconditional! Think about it! Unconditional love, all you do is just love and do nothing else. Dignity is nothing when two people are in love, maybe that’s why they get naked and do stupid stuff together but isn’t it the only thing you stand for. Why let anyone put your dignity down and let you feel guilty for every silly thing, something you did in the past, which at that point of time you felt was right for yourself. No one deserves to abuse you, even when they are angry. My mom says, walking out is the best way to express anger. Why fight when you simply can walk out. Why not simply say things that disgusts rather than bringing in the element of anger.
Imagine you are travelling on a car. There are two rides. One road is full of potholes and the other is just a plain road winding up and down the hills and valleys. Choosing the road full of potholes would make life an adventure for a day or two, while travelling on that road everyday would not be easy. When you have the option to choose, make it wise. Decisions from the heart and guts do make great instant decisions but a decision that takes years to take should not be affected by emotional biases. It would not be a choice. When you are at the crossroads and you see two roads, one rocky and another plain, both taking you two unknown destinations, choose wisely. You might be tempted to take the rocky road believing that everything will be fine after a few kilometers but what if there’s no u-turn! You can’t enjoy the rocky road all your life! Even if you can, your spinal cord wont.
Legends have a theory of walking out. Walking out is not disrespecting anyone but a way of safeguarding everyone’s dignity including your own. At one point you have to realize that the love being served to you is not rain or a spring sunshine that happens occasionally. It has to be the air you breathe. The moment you feel suffocated in a room, you walk out before the poisonous gas kills you. Walk out while there is an option to do so. Morning shows the day. One need to see the day from the morning. If you wait for the day to show you the day, you end up blaming your fate. Experiences, good or bad, emotions good or bad, reactions, good or bad are a way of telling you what’s in store for you. People don’t change with time, they become more of what they really are. The best time to walk out is when everything is normal except the possibility of a great future, at least the visibility of it. Walking out should be exercised as a choice, a free choice out of many available options rather than it being a way to safeguard precious lives.
I feel that at some point of time a man or woman must have visited God and asked him, “ God, what is it that binds two people, in a relationship”
“ Love, God must have answered”
“ What is the proof that the love that exists between two human beings is pure and true”
To find a difference, god must have created lust. God knew that man would doubt what love is and created lust and anger. True love surpasses love and anger. There is absolutely no space for lust and anger in true love. Think again, if you are in love and you are lusting someone else, think about it, is it even love.
A lot of times we use the word “ Bonding” to describe intimacy in a relationship. What is a bonding! Something that binds you. Why need an intimate moment to bind you, what binds you together to another person is just a memory you two enjoyed together, keeping in mind that you guys need to be together to enjoy that memory. This is what creates a redundant cycle of feeling loved, getting hurt, second chance, third chance, some more blunders and it goes on and on. Feeling and expressing are emotions which are extension of one another. If you are expressing your anger and base your reason for anger on love, you are as flawed as a man who says 2+2 is 5. Your expression of the anger is just a manifestation of your conflicting thoughts, conflict between your assumptions and reality. Digesting the reality on its face and letting things be as they are is what love is all about. Of course jealousy is a part of love, we as humans wont tolerate sharing our love with someone else but there has to be a way to limit our anger and reaction. Jealousy should not be the root of anger.
We as human beings are subject to difference of opinions. In a relationship, if these difference of opinions create a turbulence, watch it out. Do you fight every day for the same reason! Are you the person who is blamed every time things go wrong! Are you living the dream you saw, when you entered the relationship?
This life, you are going to live for decades. These few years of being together with a human being should not be a parameter to decide your fate because this is just a fraction of what you have to live. Have the courage to break your heart rather than shattering your life forever!
Is love all about the cookie choco chips moments! Is that it! How does it even matter whose fault is it, “aren’t we together in it”? It’s not anger that is a part of love as claimed by a lot of people, its mutual understanding of the situation of the other person that tells us what to do and what not to do. If I am in love and I am living a life I want, without even thinking of the consequences it is going to have on my partner, is it even love! Do I love my partner or it’s just that I love myself and I love the moment when the other person is around! Where is the place of toxicity in it? Even a little bit of toxicity is harmful.
Just imagine your life to be a bucket of water and the fights you have in your relationship to be droplets of ink. Every time you have a fight, add a drop of ink to the bucket. The first drop would bring no change, the second drop would also bring no change, but the 400th drop will definitely make the water change its color. That’s the power of toxicity. In small amounts, measured at small doses, it seems nothing but when gathered over a prolonged period of time what stays is only and only toxins. Toxicity in any relationships are problems and at no point in life should one let themselves be defined by.You as an individual have an identity. Does the toxicity in your relationship hurt your identity! Watch it out. That’s what relationships are not supposed to do. They are supposed to make your hellish days feel like heaven, not the other way around.
Of course people meet and live forever, that’s what we are here for in this world, as human beings. But no one, mind it no one has the authority to hurt your dignity no matter what. At times we do get unhappy with the other person but confrontation is definitely not the answer. Friction is essential for life to exist normally but not in relationships. The extent of escalation of confrontation has no limits. The best alternate to a loud confrontation is walking away and stay quiet. Even after that, if there exists anger, violence and blame games, its better to pull the plug rather than just wait for the disaster to happen.