Today is Valentine's day. A day meant for celebration of love. While growing up, like most urban teenagers, this day meant a day of wearing red, expecting a card or exchanging gifts and well, celebrating the idea of love! Today, after many springs have passed by, I remain as wide eyed about love as I was a decade back! However, the definition and the dimensions seem to be ever evolving. Thus, I thought it is high time at least I touch base with myself on this crazy journey of love and life! :)
Once, the idea of love (romantic love to be precise) was just about being wanted, it was matter of high self esteem and may be even ego! Possessing and being possessed was a necessary part of the feeling!
Times have passed. Like everyone, I too have evolved! Some knowingly and some unknowingly- willingly and unwillingly. Irrespective of the books on psycho-philosophy or the mushy romantic novels that I read, wise (and unwise) people with whom I spoke to, love has come to be defined to me as a process of self discovery, of awakening! Domestic love, bohemian love, love without definition- all seem to have only one climax of finding ones self! And yes, of loving oneself.
I have always loved the song (greatest love of all) by Whitney Houston which goes:
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed, at least I'll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all, is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all, inside of me
The greatest love of all, is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself/It is the greatest love of all.
But, is it really easy to learn to love yourself? Is it easy to draw a line between Narcissism/self obsession and self awakening? For people like me whose life most of the time seems to be dominated by numerous mundane things like meeting the project deadlines and domestic expectations, I wonder how easy it is to make this journey!
Today, as I grapple with the meaning of life and love, they just seem synonymous! To me, today, the journey of life and journey of love are inseparable, intertwined. If we forget to celebrate love, we forget to celebrate life! If the quest to find oneself is an eternal one, so is the quest to find love! And ultimately it is the same journey!
But again, it is perhaps the most difficult task to make this journey within, connect with one's inner self, to find ones real self. To accept ones own being with all the good, bad and evil and keep loving life. Or may be living love! :)
But again, it is perhaps the most difficult task to make this journey within, connect with one's inner self, to find ones real self. To accept ones own being with all the good, bad and evil and keep loving life. Or may be living love! :)
I guess if we are ready to lose ourselves, explore within, then it is indeed possible to find ourselves too! And in some rare moments of life, when you do connect with your own self, when you do feel amazed at the breath you take every moment and fall in love with life- it all completes a full circle! Life stands still on those moments. And you find yourself, you find Love!
One of the poetries by Javed Akhtar from the film, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara that has touched my heart and echoed my thoughts would perhaps sum it all up:
Pighle neelam sa behta ye sama,neeli neeli si khamoshiyan,
na kahin hai zameen na kahin aasmaan,
sarsaraati hui tehniyaan pattiyaan,
keh raheen hai bas ek tum ho yahan,
bas main hoon,
meri saansein hain aur meri dhadkanein,
aisi gehraiyaan, aisi tanhaiyaan,
aur main… sirf main.
Apne hone par mujhko yakeen aa gaya.
