On Love, Strand the First

It is something special that I feel for them. It is something different, like taking the feeling of love and concentrating it to extract its essence. Something like that.

Just a visual cue is enough to evoke this emotion, and mostly a visual stimuli is all that I have. Separated by distance in space, availability in time and an almost persistent mismatch in particularly those aspects of life that could have bridged the previous two factors, their pictures are all that I have.

But what is this feeling? How do I explain it? Do I want to explain it? Is it possible to explain everything that one feels, or is it a failed venture from the very initiation of such a task?

Explanation does not entail language. I do not need words to explain what I feel, not simply because words will be inadequate in any case, but also because there are other aspects of human interaction that sometimes speak much louder than words. It is the silent language of our body, the posture in which we stand or find ourselves in, the way we move our hands when talking with such a person, and our eyes! They speak so much! A person need only look into another’s eyes, and all the mysteries will fade away. A simple glance could turn into a gaze and information no words could have ever conveyed, flow freely between the people involved. If you cannot read the eyes, you are either indifferent or you don’t want to; for the eyes don’t just carry information, they send a token of responsibility as well. Are you willing to take that responsibility?

Is togetherness a factor? I have to answer in the negative, as far as physical proximity is concerned. These mysteries work beyond the space that you occupy. They are like waves that emanate from you and travel and travel and cover thousands of kilometers till they haven’t found what they had begun their journey for. Only then do they rest.

These waves are not dependent on a medium to propagate, they are themselves complete.

So, physical proximity is not a factor. Emotional proximity is. There are people who spend their entire lives living in the same house, sleeping on the same bed, eating the same food, and going to the same social events; yet they never have that connection of their souls.

And then there are people who spend years away from each other, in distant lands living disjointed lives following disparate dreams, yet harbouring that sacred emotional bond. They are together in their feelings, sharing their joys and sorrows, their manias and depressions, their bouts of pessimism and bursts of optimism; they are separated by space but intimately connected in everything else. It is almost a form of worship.

I find it intriguing and am positively flustered when all cross-gender bonds are invariably seen in the Darwinian imperative of finding a suitable mate. And it also bothers me because Darwinism is, firstly, unconscious in that it has no initial purpose, and it is only assigned in retrospect after observing its results; and secondly it is also subconscious in that it has already worked and driven me towards some action by the time I become consciously aware of what even happened. Is my attraction to every member of the opposite gender simply Darwin working me up; or could there be something else as well? Something subtler, beyond this gross world that we inhabit, for attraction is not always physical.

Love for the mind and love of the mind persists. It believes in giving, and does not want, much less need, anything back though it wouldn’t mind if it does get some company! In itself, this love is complete.

It is when this love is forced to adhere to the traditional notions of love, to be boxed up, compartmentalised and labeled that it really loses its essence, its true nature. Unless this tendency isn’t curtailed at the right time, this inherently sacred feeling will come to be ridiculed, derided, and misunderstood in the basest of ways.

These feelings are my own, with no conditions on them. This bond is my own, with no expectations from them. But whenever I will receive those cues, I will silently smile at the vicissitudes of life; and how these things come to be.