A Heady Brew - Love Cracks You Open

Love cracks you open.

This dawned in a dilapidated nook of SDA market, where I sat with a listener and seeker, a few weeks ago. Silent nooks fascinate me. I look out for deserted and underutilised spaces, which allow themselves to be owned. Habitation and laughter are fond companions, for those who can afford them, including inanimate spaces. And who is to say that the lifeless do not dream of life and laughter? I mean, what if the same nook now dreamt of being in the company of some lively youngsters each day, who hug like its their last meeting, and who laugh like they are the rulers of the world? Dreams, alas, are creatures of discomfort and desires. I don't plan  on going back to the nook anytime soon.

Source- hdwgo.com

But I do plan on going back to the 'cracking' phenomenon of love, rather hastily. You see, this post is one of the more oxymoronic and moronic in general, the way it is forming inside my head. Like a heady brew, if ever any was fermented in my mind. I love taking risks which are emotional in nature, but at a detached distance. Is it even possible, you ask. Well, in a strange, convoluted way, it is. I am not entirely capable of explaining this, but this whole life is going to be a series of trial and error episodes. Let this one be no different.

Safety is inconsequential and antithetical to love. I believe. Love is the greatest of risks, most potent of shocks and the ghastliest of desires. Initially, of course. As you grow in love, and as love grows inside you, you keep getting fragile - ready to act, react, respond, retract on the expectations of who you deem the centre of your Universe. The problem, my dear, is that there can only be one centre of the Universe - either you, or him/her. Yes, there are instances of two stars revolving around each other - but the gravity of one is always greater than the other.

We have no yet evolved to become such stars who have learnt to revolve around themselves. So, when love makes you fragile, and when hurts caused in love crack you open, you suddenly are lost and livid, and you have no idea what to do, except to curse the notion of love in full and plenty. And some more. As love ebbs in your system, because other, antithetical emotions are brewing stronger, you become constrained and passive, and you assume that to be a permanent state. Because you do not want to crack anymore. Because you think that any further cracks are going to be the death of you. Because you assume you are that brittle.

Only, my dear, you are not.

I am not.

I hate saying these confident sentences out loud, because somehow, the Universe always assumes that I am challenging it. It them employs rose-tinted trickeries to crack me a little more, but now, I am beyond the point of fear. Yes, when I will love too much, I will fear enough to be on the verge of breaking apart - but hey, has there been devised any other way to love intensely than to be attached to the point of mayhem? Can you truly be in love without walking long enough to forget the road which brings you home? And will you not give any and everything for even shreds of those dream sequences which bind your ordinary life to almost surreal heights of pleasure?

The point is, simply put, that love cracks you open. And while doing that, it brings you the closest to yourself. When it has to, let love enter you from all crevices, because, let me tell you, it won't last. This intensity which makes you ride to the point of brittleness, it won't last. The memory and nostalgia of it will - and that will kill you. Try and forbid that from happening, and you are good to go. You possess love, even when you don't possess the object of your love.

I reiterate.

You possess love, even when you do not posses your beloved.

Well, then, enjoy the cracking up!

Source - rhymeswithmagicart.blogspot.com

Love Each Other or Perish

Dear Morrie,

To whichever corner of heaven you are comfortably practising your wisdom in, I want to tell you that I am glad to have met you.

I know you must be sad by the way many of us are going about our lives, but I am also sure that you are okay to see us live on making mistakes and sometimes, just sometimes being strong enough to admit those to ourselves. It is essential for moving on, for evolution, for becoming better than the levels of collective misery and mediocrity that human kind debilitates to.

I don't write reviews like this, but since your student says that you promised to be a brilliant listener post your ascent to a world I don't comprehend, I thought I should thank you directly for being who you are. Even if my words of gratitude are a shout into the void, I don't care. The afterglow your book lends me despite being profoundly poignant is unmistakable.

Actually, I am wrong. Not profoundly poignant, but PROFOUND. And SIMPLE. These are the two words I can use to describe your life, your existence and your acquired wisdom. I am talking to you in first person because I have a confession to make. All that you put out in words in your Tuesday lectures, I know those things. I am not dying as of now, but I just know them. Like, I believe all humans do, but they fail to admit it to themselves as many times as they should.

I have been 'preaching' similar things out loud to a few close ones, and beliefs in the same made me take some harsh decisions, and I wanted to be sure if I was not turning out to be a really big person inside my head. After reading your transcribed words, I think I am fine, really. I think I understand where you came from, your humanism and your world view.

My only not so proud moment while going through a journey of your last days is that I would not have been able to care for you the way your student did. I would have lurked around, but not touched you. I am just trying to make my peace with this realization while being on your journey.

Mitch Albom with Morrie in 1995

So, I hope you are always alive and that you keep giving strength to many of us who are grappling with miseries and notions of life without having understood the simplicity of love and longing in its essence. I hope the world understands soon that the only way to detachment goes through experience. Intense experience.

Like you say, "Love each other, or perish". I'll hope not to perish. I'll hope to love.

Warm wishes,

Saumya

P.S. - Thanks Neha Thureja for gifting me this book. You are a fonder part of my life after this book.