Valentine's Day

Well, it's 14th February, Valentine’s Day. We could belong to the believers, the sceptics, the cynics or the agnostics, but there's no taking away from that one over arching beautiful emotion of Love.

                                              

I recall a 14th Feb of many years ago: Ravi and I were all set to go out to a romantic dinner and Diksha, who must have been six or so, says, ‘Ma, you don't love meeee?’ Somehow, Valentines day has come to stand for the romantic man woman kind of love,  and it took me that question to say......  it's about love, lets all go.

It’s surely felt for family, parents, children, uncles, aunts, cousins….all of you who matter…..

But some random thoughts on love beyond 

A little into the day today, I received an ‘I love you’ from a girl friend, with some really nice stuff said, and know what? It felt good. Love does transcend. And it’s surely not just the romantic kind of love, a friend love is also as deep, maybe even more, as it openly says a wanting for the person to be a part of life until the end. By choice.

Yet, these are equations that are never given the kind of space they deserve.

I’m talking to a friend, a girl friend, at six in the morning, a few quick minutes when she’s out to get milk, but before she walks into the house we need to hang up........ the husband may not understand why we’re talking so early in the morning.   Any amount of time spent with family is fine, any time of day or night is fine, but with friends? Ah…..ah, not easy to accept. Conditioning?

In fact ones marriages might not last a life time.... most familial situations might come with more restrictions and rules than freedom. Yet they are the accepted and glorified relationships. 

The other day I heard of this instance of a man, retired from work, in the US, who wanted to come back to India to be with his friend, but his wife didn’t want to move back. And he still took the decision to move, while she chose to stay, and he now has a house close to his friends in Chandigarh, and they meet up whenever they feel like it, a drink, cards, walks…… sounded idyllic to me. Takes courage and clarity. 

But our conditioning runs so deep, that to even make a trip out of town to just hang out with a friend is somehow not easy. There’s always something more important back home. There has to be a stronger justification for the trip and the secondary purpose can be a friend.

Now, is there a real difference between a  friend relationship and a romantic one ( the obvious one apart). In terms of intensity, longing, eagerness, there may actually be none. It’s the same desire to want to spend time together, to discover things together, to talk, to share secrets, to listen to good music with, to travel with, to be with.

I believe that a friend love is equally strong in terms of emotional and intellectual headiness and connect and even a couple of notches more peaceful as it comes minus those anxieties and insecurities which a typical romantic relationship invariably seems to come with. 

This one says it well ‘my ECG while waiting for a friend will show the same reading as waiting for a lover. Only I’m not caught up in figuring if his degree of excitement matches mine, and consequently behaving like a fool. There’s a relaxed quality to a friendship because there’s a kind of taking for granted the future.’

Maybe it's just that added layer of whatever that adds the longing, excitement and tenderness to romantic love.  The extra buzz of awareness that makes every cell tingle, that is an exclusive terrain. I'm not going more in there, as we're all familiar I'm sure. 

So be it the romantic liaisons or the friend love, It’s the relationships of choice at every moment of their existence that makes them so special.  Wonderful to love like that.....by choice…..In freedom.....because true love is that which really sets you free……