This tree is right outside my house. I have more pictures of this tree than my own, as you will see down below. I certainly feel almost everything only after looking at this tree for a while. My mom thinks I am mad sometimes when I spend a lot of time just staring at it. One of the latest things that made me feel after looking at this tree was love. Not romance or all that Hollywood jazz, but just a feeling of love. The one where you feel one with something. It could be nature, a book, a song, your morning coffee, a tree, or anything. And well, sometimes, it’s another human being too.
I wonder, wasn’t that the purpose of humans in the first place. I am damn sure, God gave humans a pinch of consciousness just to experience love. But everyone just became too caught up in feeling loved, that they forget to love. Everyone wants to feel loved, but nobody wants to love. They are afraid.
Romanticize your present life, people will walk towards you like a magnet. Tell me what would you do, if you have no insecurities and you were assured that you are taken care of your basic needs. Your answer would be some version of contentment and love.
There have to be different aspects to life too like work, rest, and self-love. Last one is most important in order to love others. And the first two ensure that.
I may be describing a utopia. But at the end of the day, we all are chasing our own versions of utopias, right. Dystopia is also just an attempt to create a different version of utopia as you know it.
Someone, I think Sadhguru, said “People want a dog or they want God. Either way, they just want unconditional love.” I believe that if you have Indian grandparents, you roughly know what unconditional love feels like.
Don’t take my word for any of it. Since I have not fallen in love as per Instagram. Albeit, we are a generation of people longing for relationships that can be reeled on social media. Somebody recently told me that “I appreciate your intellectual courage to put out ideas” when I was going through an impostor episode for my writing. Hence, my reluctance to put out this piece pretty much vanished.
Amy Winehouse describes my relationship with love in my life perfectly:
I’m a very romantic person. I don’t mean romantic in flowers and chocolate kind of way. It’s more life if it’s raining, I’ll go upto the window and press my nose against the glass and sigh at how beautiful it all looks.
I also think love is just another word for feeling heard. Yeah, when you listen to someone with all your mind and heart, they will feel love. People want to be heard. While everyone is going about their day, their hardships, difficulties, and whatnot. Everybody got a thing to say. But very few people got that to listen. You necessarily don’t need anything out of the world to say, but if you just listen intently you will win most people in the world.
Another problem is that most people are in a fairytale. That there is someone out there a “soulmate”, ugh. Tim Urban in one of his Wait But Why blog gives a practical point on “the one”:
Say two people want to find the love of their life, Person A and Person B.
Person A never goes on dates, opting instead to sit alone debating in her head about who the exact kind of person is she will fall in love with. She scours online profiles, but never contacts anyone. Instead, her plan is to wait until she comes across the profile so perfect for her that she’ll know she’s found The One. Then and only then will she reach out to that person for a date.
Person B goes on a lot of dates, constantly meeting new people and keeping an open mind, because she knows she probably doesn’t know either herself or the type of match that makes sense for her as well as she thinks she does.
Who’s more likely to find the love of their life?
Love, live, and let live.
Ciao.
P.S. There was no intention whatsoever to publish this today. I started writing this in December and apparently, it got finished earlier than I presumed. So, enjoy!