Today I’m focusing on “LOVE”. Yes
that big ‘L’ word, which seems so simple and basic to the human condition and
what most of us around the world, regardless of culture, race, language or
religion spend most of our lives preoccupied with. And yet wherever I look I
realize that whether it is the love of lovers (which is what we’re going to
talk about today), or it is the love between parent and child, love between
siblings or even love between friends or a faithful’s love for his God, or the
atheist’s love for science everyone seems to be grappling with this grand and
often elusive emotion.
The days are gone when
relationships could be taken for granted, when the social acknowledgment of a
relationship, through custom and ritual meant that it would be an unbreakable
bond. Today the feel-good saying “Marriages are made in heaven” has become more
of a sales pitch for marketing things from life insurance to cars. Gone also
are the days when we could believe the “happily ever-after” ending of fairy-tales
as “The End” to love stories. And yet it is also human nature to want
desperately to believe that story. Young couples that have just met each other
spend a phase of courtship fantasizing about the happy ending, they can’t wait
to see each other, talk to each other and celebrate love. Then as time goes by
something changes in their view of each other. Once the period of putting up
appearances for encounters that seemed too brief then has passed, and we
realize this person is who we’re going to wake up next to for the rest of our
lives, when we’re no longer made up, or putting only the best foot forward then
we actually begin to SEE each other. We begin to see our true selves with the
other. Then what had appeared to be a seamless fit begins to look like two
wrong pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that one is trying to fit together. So what
happens? What goes wrong? And are the people for who it goes ‘right’ just
lucky?
These are all tricky questions
and I don’t have any answers for them either. But I do often reflect on my own
experiences and those of others who share their problems with me and wonder in
all the decisions people make to give up or give in, say something or remain
silent, fight to keep something or letting it go, being truthful at the cost of
hurting someone, or continuing a lie at the cost of hurting themselves being
taken for granted and staying, or taking a risk and walking out at that moment
we feel that it the only right thing to do, believing there is NO other way. I
find that most often people suffer and are unhappy in a relationship, or out of
it not because of the relationship (or lack) itself but because they feel that
they have no choice in the matter. But here’s something I’ve understood about
myself and I think it applies to all of us – There is always a choice and often
it is our inability to see one that makes us unhappy, causes suffering and
hurt. Sometimes the right choice is the difficult choice. That is why we ignore
it, or our mind that prefers to be in a comfort zone, refuses to even
acknowledge it.
I see marriages where people
stopped communicating. There the minds of the couples tell them that there is
no way to get out of this so just suffer silently, because there’s too many
other things at stake. And then the feeling of being ‘stuck’ takes over making
them more miserable and pushing them to hurt themselves and each other more. If
a couple in such a situation made a different choice albeit a risky one of
communicating then the situation would become very different. That requires
breaking a pattern which is definitely the more difficult option and our mind
will convince us by giving us a million reasons why breaking the pattern is not
a good idea.
There are no perfect
relationships – yes not even the ones that are matched by horoscopes. There are
only possibilities of being happy oneself and with another person or not.
“Relationships are hard work” is the new saying. I don’t agree because this
makes it sound as though they’re boring and exhausting 9-5 jobs, you never know
when you might be laid off and you can’t be sure of your appraisal at the end
of year. I believe relationships are a like a garden and two people like
gardeners nurturing a very special bond. In the garden there are a variety of
plants; flowering plants, big greens of tropical forest, vegetables, creepers
even thorny cacti. The garden looks different as the years go by. And it needs
different things and often diametrically opposite things as the seasons change.
Like the garden may need a lot of water during the summer, but right after that
in the rains, perhaps there will be plants that need to be protected from too
much water. Some plants may wither away in the harsh winter and seem as though
they have died. But a good gardener doesn’t give up hope nor ceases to nurture
the withered plant. It may take months before a little leaf might open its arms
out to the world again on a beautiful spring morning. And what you thought was
dead comes back to life. That is a truth related to Prediction for Astrology. It is also a truth that a good gardener
is aware of when a plant is truly dead and doesn't hold on to it but takes it
out of the pot, cleans up the earth and plants something fresh in that same
pot.
Stay tuned for the continuing post...
