Where has love gone?
Love remains one of the least talked about and studied emotions. Grown-ups feel embarrassed talking about it. Love, it seems, can survive only in dying poetry. On the other hand, comprehensive studies and empirical data on violence earn credibility. It is respectable to talk about violence. A vital fact that is ignored is that absence of love breeds violence, says Vandana Shukla

CITIES with a swollen population, crumbling neighbourhoods — victims of modern housing development-- scattered families in pursuit of individual goals, a world on wheels with all values that sustained humanity crushed out of shape. Homes over-stuffed with consumer articles but breeding places for loneliness. No wonder, love finds little space to grow here.

Against this background, love seems to be a remote sentimental idea. One played with it in the teens and then discarded it like an old pair of jeans that one can’t quite fit into because of increasing body weight. The weight of sobriety and snobbery does not allow us to sit back and reflect on what happened to the warmth of love. In the tight schedule of life and its games, have we lost it forever?

Love plays an important role in shaping a human body into a human being. Yet, it remains one of the least talked about and studied emotions. Grown-ups feel embarrassed talking about it. Love, it seems, can survive only in dying poetry. On the other hand, comprehensive studies and empirical data on violence earn credibility. It is respectable to talk about violence. A vital fact that is ignored is that absence of love breeds violence.

As humanity advances, there is more and more lovelessness. All advanced societies suffer from acute psychological disorders stemming from lack of love. The growth of violence as a global phenomenon has forced sociologists and psychologists to address this issue with a sense of urgency. But the debate has been trapped in the margins of communalism, socialism, casteism, racism, ethnicism, etc.

We have been concentrating on the sociological problems as they surface with clock-work regularity: a growing divorce rate, child abuse, rape, crime et al, while ignoring the processes that produce them in the first place.We are studying the symptoms at the collective level and ignoring the unit -- the individual. Individuals are taken for granted as cogs in a big machine. But, by oiling the machine we cannot reform the cogs. Like a crazy dog, we keep chasing our own tail ignoring the basic issues.

How did love gather such a connotation that it is now embarrassing to talk about it? Love sounds mawkish. Love is blind; love me, love my dog; falling in love -- such concepts limit the natural growth of a emotion which has been celebrated and preached by all religions. Unfortunately, though all religions claim to propagate love, they have only succeeded in breeding more violence. How and why did love become secondary to humanity can be a point of research. Perhaps, as long as the religions that grew out of folk consciousness celebrated love as a part of natural consciousness, love remained an accepted way of life. It was celebrated in literature, sculpture and the folk arts.

Perhaps it was the introduction of the religion of the book which disturbed this symmetry by dividing human consciousness into "we" and "they". Perhaps, with the advancement of logic, we now think of love with our limited perceptions rather than allowing ourselves to be governed by the feeling of love. We take love to be a self-limiting, weakening emotion. It is viewed as an emotion which hampers one’s external growth, rather than as an agent that accelerates human growth and unfolds consciousness.

Eventually, things have come to such a pass that demonstration of love is not considered to be accepted social behaviour. Rebuking your subordinate, wife, or child in public is okay but showing your love towards them is frowned upon. At the collective level, terrorism and secessionism find many easy followers. However, there aren’t many who would give their life for a positive cause.

Often love is thought to be limited to the experience of "falling in love". Certainly, "falling in love " is one of the strongest manifestations of love that helps in extending one’s ‘self’ and in dissolving the boundaries of the egos of two individuals. Primarily, it remains an intense erotic experience that is temporary -- the honeymoon always ends.

Often also, in the process of falling in love, we tend to ignore the need for growth of the beloved. We perceive each other as "perfect", "perfected for each other" — thereby blocking all channels of growth. This eventually causes stagnation and the growth of individuals as well as of the relationship is stunted.

Without this trick that a combination of biological and psychological factors play on us, we cannot cross over to the threshold of real growth and real love. The experience of temporary merging is a strong stimuli to work towards stretching it to a state of permanence.

To achieve this level of permanence — first, we must dissociate ourselves from the myth of romantic love which tends to taint our expectations from love relationships. Right from childhood — fairy tales to the adolescent Mills and Boon books and the adulthood films — all foster the myth of prince and princess who, once they are united, live happily ever after. From ordinary men and women to the men and women who acquire great stature — all tend to fall victims to this myth and waste vast amount of energies attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth. They live unhappily ever after.

As divorce rates are mounting in all societies, there is a need to develop an understanding of sustainable human relationships. It is only through love that human bonds can survive. Dr M. Scott Peck in his much-talked-about book, The Road Less Travelled, tries to unravel the secret of real love by demystifying various myths regarding love. According to him, real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience, it is not a feeling but an act, it is not a natural act but a conscious choice, and it is a disciplined effort. He says that when limits are extended or stretched, they require a continuous, conscious and disciplined effort. It is only when these limits stay stretched that a self-enlarging experience is possible for the self as well as for the loved one — and eventually for others around us.

To achieve this, first one has to clarify all myths regarding love. One has to unlearn what love is not to enter into the true understanding of what is love.

Dependence is not love: There are certain misconceptions about love. When people require another individual for their survival they think they love him/her. They presume they cannot survive without him or her — there is no choice, no freedom in such relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love. This is not true love. Love requires freedom of spirit — only parasites can be so dependent. Mothers, who continue to baby their children for all practical purposes till their adulthood, hamper their own growth as well as of their children. Dependency of a pet may enhance the owner’s ego but neither is growing in the process — it only nourishes infantilism.

Over indulgence is not love: Love is not simply giving. It is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticising. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging in addition to comforting. Spouses who set no limits on their behaviour retard a relationship rather than furthering its growth. Mothers who over protect their children, fathers who buy roomfuls of toy for children and cannot deny any desires, push children into retardation. It is not real love.

Love is not self-sacrifice: Individuals who conform, often suffer from a self-righteousness based on their tolerance of mistreatment and self-sacrifice. Women particularly love wearing the mask of ‘poor woman’. They fail to acknowledge their own need to maintain an image of superiority through this device. They let themselves believe that whatever they do, they do for others and are indulging in self-denial. Love is a pleasurable experience, self-denial makes it painful. True love is a choice that enlarges rather than a self-imposed, diminishing exercise.

Love is not a feeling: Love is an overwhelming feeling only when one has fallen in love. "Love is as love does" one may keep feeling love without doing anything towards the growth of the "love object" but that is not true love. The feeling of love allows people all types of self-deception whereby they keep declaring their love for spouse and children without practically doing anything towards their growth. It is painful to search for evidence of love in one’s actions. True love is an activity, invested with our energy, attaching with it a sense of importance so that in the process the love object develops and grows.

Love requires work of attention: When we extend ourselves to take an extra step, it requires effort. The most important effort required towards building a healthy love relationship is sharing and listening to each other. In most cases we are so full of ourselves that we fail to perceive and appreciate how the other perceives and thinks. Due to the gender superiority bestowed upon men by social conditioning, they often fail to listen to wisdom of their women and children. Most parents refuse to pay attention when their children talk. But compare it to a situation when you are sitting before your favourite TV show. Against all the rattle and prattle going on — you concentrate on the show because you love to watch it. True love pays attention, the exercise requires discipline and concentration. Listening to others with full attention is a manifestation of love.

There is a risk of loss, independence, commitment and confrontation in love: In love we extend our limits. Thus we enter a new and unfamiliar territory. Our self becomes a new and different self. The same may happen to the other person whom we love. All living mechanisms change — if we shy away from change, from death — we inevitably shy away from life. Thus true love requires acceptance of loss and acceptance of independence. Conformity and caging does not breed love.

True love also allows confrontations because it recognises and respects the unique individuality and separateness of the other person. "You-scratch-my-back, I-will- scratch-yours" kind of arrangement can be polite but certainly it is not meant for a meaningful growth of human relationship.

Love is separateness: People who fall head-over-heels in love with each other, are too much married, too close, get suffocated and fall apart sooner than expected because they fail to see the other as an individual. The other person is taken for granted as an image or as an extension of one’s self. But this can never be true. Parents who are over-protective and over-interfering in their effort to make their children like them eventually lose them.

Love relationships require great mutual contributions and care, time and energy, respect for each other and must exist for the primary purpose of nurturing each of the participants for individual journeys towards his or her own individual peaks. Since modern mind is more attuned to analysis and applicability of each human attitude, love too needs to be understood and then applied in building each human relationship.

As St Exupery said, "Man is but a network of relationships and these alone matter to him." No matter how advanced a life-style one may have with a network of cellulars and satellites, nothing can substitute the human touch of love. There is no wisdom like the wisdom of love. Indian consciousness has known it for long-- dhai akhar prem ka padhe so pundit hoye finds no parallel.