Rohit’s Phenomenology Of Love
When I was a kid, I found immense joy in playing with my mom and being around her. She took good care of me. There was serenity in her arms. I don’t remember the time I accepted her as my mother. It happened somehow. And once I accepted I could never reject the motherhood I had found. As a kid, I loved being around her. I used to follow her everywhere she went. She used to call me her shepoot (tail). She used to read me out stories from tinkle and lull me to sleep. I loved her a lot. I loved being loved by her. We shared an unbounded love. She spent the final months of her life with me. I was with her until her last breath. We made a lot of promises to each other. I was the last person she saw.
To me, love has meant many things. One of them was the immanent sense of joy, comfort and warmth you feel around someone. I believe there are no reasons to be in love. That was one of the first things I told my partner on a very special night. There was no reason for me to accept my mother the way I did. It happened as if the bond existed even before I met her, even before I was born. That reality could take no other shape than this particular. I feel the same way towards my partner too.
I understood further about love from my dad. I was adopted when I was around three. I knew it and I was trying to understand the world. My dad, although a little older than what could be an ideal age to be a parent, accepted me and took me under his care. He doubled his work hours to provide me with better schooling. He always made me feel enough. He recognized my potential and encouraged me to make the best use of it. He used to send me to a lot of hobby classes and tuitions to kindle my learning. I was a quick learner. He identified me for my abilities and reminded me of them every now and then. I feel fortunate to have found such parents in a world where it’s easy to lose hope. My dad, although short-tempered had an admirable heart. I have inherited a few qualities from him that I believe are sustainable for life. Through him, I understood how much richer it is to love than to be loved and how much more gratifying to serve than to be served. His love was selfless and I am glad to have known this early on in my life. Love is indeed a selfless act and I believe it. Perhaps an immeasurable state of being.
Thinking of first love, I don’t know exactly what it was but I feel we are more in our true spirits when we are kids and it’s easier to know our inclinations if not anything else about them. I was in second grade when I first felt some sort of propensity towards a person. She was my bench mate in school. She would always welcome me with grace and my infatuation soared by the way she used to talk to me. I liked sitting next to her, she reciprocated similar feelings. The feelings were innocent yet joyful. It was short-lived, rather a chance. The feeling vanished very soon as we grew apart. For a tiny moment or so, I felt my soul could love someone. By soul, I mean the essence. That which precedes my identity, my ‘myness’ and all the things that constitute me. I came to realise it last year in 2021. I went inwards, I assembled myself on the fundamental level. A gnawing smog of ignorance cleared from my mind, I was becoming more conscious. And here, in this realm, I came across my partner who was on her own spiritual journey. I braved myself to be able to love again, now with a clearer conscience and a sense of purpose.
Growing up, I wouldn’t deny I had an affinity for romanticism. A rainy evening on a beach or the reassurance in holding hands. I have appraised romance for its ability to cheer us into relationships. I wrongly believed love and romance to be synonymous. I clutched to a lot of facts about love that were only true if I followed a conventional method of being in it. And I suffered when it didn’t meet the standards I had in mind. I believe there are no know-hows, I value the experience.
I wouldn’t categorize my previous encounters to be pleasant, they are a part of my being I suppose. There’s a lot of pressure on our first relationships to be perfect and mature. In all seriousness, they are not and it is fine. Societal expectations and the ignorance that comes with teenage pollute love. For some, the dejection itself is gruelling enough to lose faith in love. It requires courage to affix our hearts to someone. I have had such moments of despondence that were accompanied by intense episodes of grief after I lost my parents. I am glad, I found bits of hope squandered in the objective interests I developed over the years. Literature, music, philosophy, gyming, trekking, astronomy and quite recently Yoga have kept me remain resilient. I can sincerely accept that what kept me in toxic cycles of alliance was a fear of hopelessness. I used to cope with it by reading existentialism and validating my doubts that at the crux of our belief system, everything is meaningless. I did feel the void when all was gone. Death and perfidy were two such fears.
I once came across a quote, the legitimacy of which feels admissible to a practical mind- ‘There are only two outcomes to love, either death or heartbreak’. I have feared death since I was five. And heartbreaks, I don’t like to think of. I feel it devoids me of the joy of ‘being in love’ to run on a feeling of insecurity. I like to give it all or none. It keeps me closer to my natural state.
Retrospectively, I have been much of a tolerant. It was a byproduct of my capacity for patience. I rarely lost my temper, I do understand we live in a world. People are at times, infuriating. I like to remain mindful of our limited time and hence I give negligible importance to anger, resentment and spite. It goes without saying that I avoid being hateful towards someone or something. Hence a great deal of relief from what has passed. There would be no conclusions except a re-telling of what we understand about ourselves. Hence me and my partner, we discerned and laid our relationship on the foundation that it’s important that we love ourselves before we can love the other. It’s important to know who we are before we know anyone else. If we can keep aside the egocentric model of the world, relationships I do believe are an aid to self-growth. It can be parallel yet in the vicinity of our purpose.
From my experience, I realise most of the noise in a relationship is the mind made drama revolving around feelings of fear and self-doubt. I was in ninth grade when I profoundly felt I loved someone. My ideas were corrupted by the novels I read and the unrealistic standards movies had set. To me at that time, love was more of a yearning than ‘being’. An acute state of pretence than presence. I had a hard time feeling authentic. I can forgive myself for the youthful damness, it only taught me what love wasn’t. Further, in another long relationship, many realities of love opened. Relationships in its fancy, do need work. It takes effort to know someone for their frailties and for one’s own. It’s easy to forget our humanness and fall into patterns of conceited conflicts. Over time, I let go of it.
I wouldn’t advocate what love is. To me, it has felt like an inspiriting journey towards self-discovery. To me, relationships are for empowering each other, something I understood from my dad. It underscores my responsibility as a human to be able to feel a feeling freely. To be able to love freely and receive it equally. It’s a good antidote to despair and after having tested many philosophies, I can ascertain that love is a quintessential life force holding the world together. I like to believe that, I believe that.
