THE ART OF LOVE
Untangling something the mind can’t even comprehend
Stumbling across empty thoughts could drawn you into something, sunken into the deepest mire, searching for an answer, this common thoughts might hits different people from a different angle. Sure enough, our mind poses different thoughts per second, it’s always in a juxtaposition of million of things. Hence, the search for meaning of life acted as the basic riddle for humankind’s quest for answer.
The question began with a simple research question, ‘what drives us into this life?’, after we find the answer to that question, the research continues by asking another question of ‘what is the point of this continuous cycle of pain and joy, of the basic routine from the our first to last breath?’. From this question, my logical self began to venture for an answer… however, nothing even came near to decipher this life-long question.
When my mind was empty from thoughts, from rationalising everything, I started to find some kind of revelation, that none of the rational things will never came close to answer it. Because, initially the answer lies in front of our eyes, in the back of our hand, and to find it is as easy as turning your palm, the answer for the life-long question is the one extraordinary feeling that will drive you mad, but also will make you the happiest person ever lived. The one feeling that is so paradoxical and complex, that it could become the primary substance of your existence, but also you mortality.
Have you guessed it? Yes, it’s the feeling of love. To define ‘Love’, one might have to read thousands, even millions of article, but one will never capture the bona fide essence of it. To begin with, Love is not an acronym nor is it limited to an abstract of noun, adjectives, or verb. Even in greek terms, to define love, one must go through the trouble in differentiating 3 kinds of love, which is eros, agape and philia. In Indian philosophy, human existence has four main aims: dharma — the compliance of the religious order and social rules, artha — the acquirement of material goods and knowledge, moksha — the release from the rebirth, and lastly, Kama — you guessed it right, it’s Love, Love is included in main aims of human beings. Love, is one of the most intense emotions that human beings could ever experience. The intense feeling will take you to a different realms of feelings, attitudes, affection, pleasure, depression, without any limitations. To be frank, the only way to understand the meaning of it, you have to swim through the current of Love.
Earlier, I said that love is the substance that breathe out life, as Philosopher Bertrand Russel said in Marriage and Morals, “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.” Thus, why is the feeling of love so vital that it could be connected to life and death? Isn’t it just a feeling after all?
To answer this we have to let our personal experience become the judge. Have you ever feel like you want to throw up and your heart is pounding so hard that your palm became sweaty because the person you like is standing near you? Have you ever felt an unbearable pain in your chest, severe anxiety and short of breath when your mother is lying sick? Or have you ever feel so happy and loved by yourself that you look in the mirror and see yourself, to say thank you and tears started streaming down to your cheeks? All three possibilities acted as an example that the simple feeling of love, manage to rose to the physical world, and affect your body and soul simultaneously. It is the force that drives humankind to find passion, it is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of their personality.
Love acted as the middle way of life and death. This sentence is applicable in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, a symphony of love that brought the death into life. Coming from a greek mythology, the legend began with Orpheus and his lyre who fell in love with a beautiful wood nymph, Eurydice. The love grew stronger by the day, and the love at first sight lingers into their daily life, thus they decided to get married. However, destiny said otherwise, and grief started to ensue happiness when Eurydice left the mortal world with a bite from a deadly viper. The centre of Orpheus’ universe crumbles down, heart broken and alone, he made a supernatural plan that could bring back his wife to his own arms. Orpheus went to the underworld to negotiate with Hades, in order to move Eurydice to the mortal world. It is said that that no god or mortal could resist his music and even the rocks and trees would move themselves to be near him, the same goes to even the most stone-cold god, Hades. Hades agreed to the plan with one condition, that Orpheus had to walk the journey back to the world of the living without looking back, and just to believe that Eurydice is walking behind him. Impatient to be with his wife, Orpheus unfortunately looked back, and he got only a glimpse of Eurydice, before Eurydice was drown back to the world of the dead. From then on, the musician with the enormous pain and void in his chest found no reason to live anymore, the melody he created was soon turned into the saddest symphony, he became disoriented and found no reason to live anymore as the love of his life was nowhere near him. He finally died, and reunited back with his beloved Eurydice. From this extremely romantic and tragic mythology, we realised that love is the reason behind our beating heart, behind our lust to live, behind every motivation Orpheus found to the world of the living.
Beside Orpheus and Eurydice, we have seen millions of story about love from Shakespeare, Stendhal, Austen, and other writings that made your heart melted. In reality, from British Royal family, the love that Queen Victoria felt for her husband Prince Albert was so deep until his death in 1861, from that moment on Victoria chose the colour black for the rest of her life and spent her life secluded from her relatives. When she finally passed away in 1901, she was buried with these words inscribed over the door: “Farewell best beloved, here at last I shall rest with thee, with thee in Christ I shall rise again.” The love Shah Jahan had for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal — or the ‘Jewel of the Palace’ as he named her marked as one of the memorable declaration of love, after Mumtaz Mahal died, Shah Jahan built the mesmerising Taj Mahal dedicated for his unconditional love. It took him 23 years to built it where he finally joined her into the eternal. Beside the love of a star-crossed couple, the unrequited, and purest love is the love between a mother and a child. This, I encountered by my own. Until her last breath, my mother loved me with everything she got, on the verge of breaking down, she said to me that the only thing that kept her fighting the cancer is the love she has for me and my brother. Even though the universe said otherwise, her last moment was the happiest she could ever be because all of her loved ones was beside her. On the other hand, I was completely clueless and quickly found no will to live, since the biggest love I’ve ever felt has vanished, but then again, I found love in the most hopeless place that kept me going, the love for myself, my family, best friends and my boyfriend.
Human beings are built with the most complex mind, and yet we were formed by something that cannot be understood by only one logical explanation. The sporadic meaning of love is the thing that will make you feel energised and colourful in the morning but it could also be the feeling that makes your night the darkest it could ever be, just as Beethoven said on Immortal Beloved ‘Your love made me the happiest and unhappiest at the same time’. To say that love is not everything, is a mere smoke-screen, because it is the one thing that drives mostly everything, and to quote the movie Love Actually, ‘And if you look for it, Love, actually IS all around’
