Mahabharata, one of the greatest epics of all time, states: “Revenge is the purest emotion.” When you come to think of it, this quote might indeed turn out to be true. However, we really need to ask ourselves: Can revenge outlive humanity? The most obvious answer to this question would be: No, it can’t! What does it mean then? If the purest emotion cannot stick around forever, then what can? Think of it, after all, the good things in life rarely center on hate….
When you look at the pages of history, at times long gone by, you are sure to come across figures such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini who have been remembered to serve as an example of what the human being should not turn out to be! They built their personas on hate and its subsidiaries. And if we are to go a little bit further, then those very pages of history will give us names that have been forever etched in the cornerstone of humanity for the insurmountable love they showered upon the world; love of every kind that went far beyond the simple ties of race and kinship.
For every Hitler and Mussolini, we are bound to have countless people such as Wordsworth, Nelson Mandela, Rabindranath Tagore, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. While some would speak of erasing every living vestige of life from the surface of the planet, the others will sing and write of creating a whole new world filled with love from the very ashes of destruction. What is this if not love in its truest and greatest form?
We have talked much about love and hate. Let us try to go deeper into this emotion that might be responsible for sustaining humanity as a whole. What is love? The precise answer to this simple question cannot be found in the most exhaustive tomes of the world. The greatest academician in the globe will definitely falter in trying to explain what love is in simple terms. All that we can say is love has to be experienced rather than defined in order to be understood.
So how many types of love can we experience in our life? The answer to that would be countless! Sophocles said, “One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.” Let’s try to think of the vast number of ways through which we can liberate ourselves from the “weight” and “pain” of life.
Perhaps the most spoken about form of love is the one that a person harbors for his or her partner. Indeed this is perhaps the commonest form of love that is portrayed in mainstream media nowadays. The best part about this is that love for a partner knows no gender, race, caste, creed, color or nationality. The cupid can come at you with its arrows at any given moment and that will turn out to be the start of a beautiful journey. Sexuality does not play a great part in such love. You can define yourself as belonging to any gender or role; it is the sensation of loving another person that counts the most. One of the strongest sensations of being in love with your partner is that it engenders great optimism; the kind that says, “When it rains look for rainbows, when it’s dark look for stars.”
We learn to love from our homes. It should not come across as a surprise to many that people who have gone through a broken childhood normally end up having issues with relationships later in their lives. Perhaps this is one of the biggest reasons that should convince us to talk about love for the family and love within the family more often. After all, it is the family that looks after its own when the going gets tough. From the simplest gestures such as giving a brother, father, wife, sister or husband the time and space they need when they are upset to sharing the grief of one, love for the family tends to go a long way when it comes to helping each other grow as human beings. Acknowledge the love that made you grow up into the person that you are today. Would you have survived right after being born had your mother not embraced you with her warmth and suckled you at her breast?
There is an important aspect that should be noticed in this case; love of such kind mostly always perpetuates itself. The love you give someone today in your family will probably be magnified and handed over to someone else who is much younger to you. Won’t you feel good to be the creator of so much love and care?
A few lines back the reader must have surely come across the name of Wordsworth. William Wordsworth. One might wonder, how can that poet be a part of this detailed article on love. The correct answer to that would be the fact that William Wordsworth himself was a great lover of Nature. A love so great that it found expressions through his many poems where he seems to praise the unmatchable beauty of Mother Nature. A beauty so pure that it evokes an intense love; and this love provides him with the “bliss of solitude” he speaks of in his poem Daffodils. Furthermore, it should be noted that Wordsworth’s love of Nature was ascribed to the religious doctrine he was claimed to follow – Pantheism. A belief that states God resides in all entities of Nature. Everything that belongs to the natural environment, surrounding us, has divinity residing in it. We do not need to become Pantheists in order to prove a point about love, but we can surely acknowledge the fact that loving nature would make our lives sublime.
Loving the self is important. One can speak at great length when it comes to loving the self. On the other hand, this topic does not seem to require many words other than what the title really stands for: Love Yourself. No matter how much is spoken on this, it can almost always turn out to be the hardest thing to do in life. In the end, people need to remember the fact that they cannot really love someone else unless they have been able to love themselves. Even the words “I love you” places the “I” before the “You”! Try giving yourself a pat every time you are able to complete an assignment on time. Notice yourself when nobody else does. It helps a lot.
George Sand’s words ring true, “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.” The only important matter to deal with in our lives once we have understood all about love is that we need to love the world around us and be loved back in return for it.
Written by Poonam Chatterjee
I am the 27 -year-old budding author, pet lover, and foodie. From a tender age of ten, I found my calling in the written word and since then, has been scribbling away my unconventional ideas, sometimes in the last pages of notebooks and sometimes on online blogs. Writing gives me happiness like no other thing.
Week 6, February 2021
