Aah! You’ll probably gasp in joy as you read the title and for an instance close your eyes and go through the Def Leppard song. I remember being an ardent listener of this song way back 2000, the year when I finished school and stepped out in to the outside world. The cold and chilling, practical and hostile world where every man should learn to survive. Over the years of engineering and MBA, while innumerable lessons have been learnt, I today preach the sermon on the vulnerability of the human mind once again. No, I don’t sit with dreamy eyes on the edge of my bed with a flower in my hand and whispering nervously like a virgin, “she loves me! she loves me not!”. I’m sure and sorry to disappoint you but I did turn out to be smarter at birth and perhaps that virtue stuck on with me through my adolescence and maturity( “ If so, I may rightly proclaim).
Well, coming back to the title, I was just wondering on whether the human mind is fragile and fray enough to succumb to the love of a person to an extent that he has to forget the follies of the person. Can you love a person and yet hate them as well. Good lord, people would probably think of my as one to be stored away in an asylum. Yet, all the same, out of all the so called wisdom that has been emanating from my beard, I presume, this one has taken a lot of my time and analysis.
On one hand we have people to whom you talk about love and they have a picture of hearts falling from the sky and cupids dancing and everything is so idealistic. People are ready to sacrifice their entire past and present for one go at the so called fantasy land, a place where there is something called true love. Pardon my intended sarcasm and mockery of such souls, due to my personal biases, but nonetheless, they dream and hope for the state of perfect contentment. For these individuals, life is like a movie, perhaps notting hill and these people no less than Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, they wish for one, where commitment leads to contentment. Aptly, the title “And they lived Happily ever after” fits perfectly into the picture like the last page of fairy tales we read as children.
But that is perhaps what lot of people dream for and very few achieve. While I don’t believe in any form of arbitrary generalization, yet, in most cases, the stark reality is different. People meet and see the best sides of each other. We see any what we want to see and based on our requirements, aptly create a match between what we want to see and what we see at that time. Later, when there is everything we need in order to make ourselves happy, we realize that despite the commitment, the so called contentment is not there. Why? Simply because there is a mismatch between the perceived and the actual reality. We simply don’t try to see the other side of the person. Every individual has shades of grey, a set of virtues and vices. While we are in love with a person initially, we see only the good things of that person. We are so attuned to the virtues about the person we love is that later when we get into a long term commitment or an institution like marriage, we are not in a position to handle the grim reality that the person you love so much has a different side which you were perhaps unaware of or rater you conveniently turned cold shoulder to.
If I tell you now that the people whom I love the most are the ones I hate most as well at times, how would you react. Accept it, not react to it or simply deny it. But somewhere down the line there is some truth in what I say. We think that the people we love are subjected to unconditional love of specific intensity irrespective of what situation may arise. We exult chants of magical and undying love, where we’d do anything. But when it really comes to the long run, when you are talking about not just day or nights but years or an entire lifetime, there are times that the person you love so much is the one you’d probably despise and loath at times. These are the people on whom you may be angered, or perhaps hate them.
While hate may be a harsh term at times and in certain cases, yet what I’d say is that my liking for people fluctuate daily. One instance I really like a person and another instance I might not. My liking for a person changes. At times, I remembered the quote “The fun is in the chase”. Come to think about it but perhaps the lady love you were crazy about no longer appeals to you. Why do marriages lose charm at times. Why do we have so many discussions on reigniting passions in a marriage that is failing.
Perhaps a slight indication towards what I’m saying and the fact that I’m not abnormal when I say that I get bored of my girl friend. While this is definitely not an acceptance speech of my commitment, disappointing all the young beautiful single ladies, and I still maintain that I'm pretty much single, yet, I’d say that this really happens. Your liking for your girl friend, wife, or family relatives changes and we are perhaps not aware of this ourselves. Happens with me. In my limited interaction with women, my fascination for them ends very soon. My best friend has to incur my wrath at times and at times so do I. There are innumerable things in her that I probably hate and want to change. There are times when simply dislike her for everything and yet somehow, we sustain.
Think of it, the people whom you love are the ones whom you know the most intimately and closely. While there may be some facets that you may love, there may be equal number of things that you may find repulsive or irritating at times. At times, this becomes prolonged which may be lead to severe personality disorders at times. Harsh irritation, violent behavior, undue aggressiveness are all facets that occur and usually unknowingly.
I guess part of human nature, people whom we love most are the people from whom we expect most and at times get angry upon. In fact I’d say, when we talk about long term relationships and institutions, it is not the ability to love a person continuously with same intensity that counts, rather it is the ability to sustain the journey through all the ups and downs that matters. Knowing that your partners may have his days of sunshine and gloom in context of his or her liking for you. Going on despite everything is what really matters.
