Thoughts on Love
As a kid I always wondered what love was. It was an abstraction of Disney movies where the princess always got the prince: I wanted to be the prince. It was the abstraction of Bollywood movies: I wanted to be that awkward actor who upon discovering love goes into a dance sequence. It was the abstraction of TV shows and books and …
Growing up I always wanted love as a thing, as a noun, as a possession. I wanted to say put your hands up and give me your love. But that isn’t love. It’s just something you want to own but can’t. It’s putting value on the form. But love isn’t the form. Love isn’t a noun!
The act of loving is an experience. Love is a verb. It isn’t something that you have and then call it a day. It’s something that develops over time. It intertwines the lives of two people into a dance, the music of life plays on in the back. Sometimes the song ends. Sometimes the song keeps going and we forget that we are dancing at all.
Love is to enjoy the other dancer’s twists, their shakes, their awkward stiff movements, their off beat rhythm. Their quirks, their passions, their fears and pains. Taking them as yours they become a part of your life as much as theirs. Their laughs become your laughs, their sorrow yours. You wish to push their happiness higher even if it means curtailing your own.
It means doing a different dance even if you don’t know the moves. It is teaching the other something new, experiencing something new, growing into something new. It is the awkward joke said in bed, the giggles that are shared, the vistas that are conquered. It’s looking in their eyes and seeing your own joyous soul.
Love is also the fear you endure. The fear of loss and distance. The yearn to continue the dance when the music has stopped. The palpitations of the heart when you don’t see them, the travails of a crying heart. The strangeness of having to dance anew.
Love is an experience. It may be long or short, wonderful or morose but it is shared. And when the song ends you may continue dancing to another song or you may part ways and all you hear is the beating of their heart like the current of a river. Slowly it fades off in the distance.
But the joys will always be remembered.
