A Valentine’s Day note: let LOVE be  not degenerated

Love is one of the choicest discoveries. It goads, pains, inspires; but tastes sweet.  Love means you and me— I mean everyone living lives blissfully.  There are many love philosophies. The triangular love philosophy comprises ‘intimacy, passion and commitment’ as the core components of love. Love has religious and spiritual meanings too. Love— defined as an intense feeling of deep affection—a great interest and pleasure in something— is difficult to define, however.  It is because of the diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings.

Possession—the relationship of possessiveness— is not love. The saying that everything is fair in love and war is a flop, a filthy, and a fatally  flawed notion. The late Dr. Rahat Indori— the famous Bollywood lyricist and Urdu language poet—defines love a state of completeness— ‘Jang Ho Ya Ishq Ho, Bharpoor Hona Chahiye’.

Today’s most couples encounter a fundamental relationship problem. They misconstrue love with the relationship of possessiveness. Such a love could just be a lust that could wither away to become an unappealing affair as time elapses. Love is never a lust.  Love lies in the relationship of togetherness which never ever withers. Look at the picture of the spouses shared at the end and see how love smells sweet, and blossoms only with togetherness regardless of age. Also behold the pigeon’s couple to learn how eternal and infinite love is.

Celebrating the ‘Pranaya Diwash’— the ‘Love Day’— the ‘Valentine’s Day’ is not a recent innovation. The choicest historical   love-couples, whose love to one another knew no any bounds and who observed everyday as their valentine’s day notwithstanding that most of the couples had to suffer a tragic end, include Radha-Krishna, Romeo- Juliet, Laila- Majnu, and Muna-Madan. Today’s youth need to learn a lot from these couples.

People value the same thing differently and choose the thing they value most as their Valentines depending on their innate characters, upbringing and what they are destined to do. King Midas— popularly remembered in the Greek mythology— valued gold most at the cost of the rest whereas Buddha valued ‘Nirvana’ to the neglect of all forms of comforts and amenities of life.

Love is something like a way of life for humans. They cannot survive without love. Everyone loves something. This something one may call a Valentine. The Valentine could, however, be anything. It was Laila for Majnu, serving humanity for Mother Teresa, and anti-apartheid revolution for Nelson Mandela. It was a philosophy of peace and compassion for Buddha. He left the throne, wife and children at midnight for achieving ‘ Nirvana’— a transcendent state in which there is neither a suffering, nor a desire, nor a sense of self, nor a compulsion of birth and death —a major destination  for healing the pain and grief having achieved enlightenment.

Those who wish to have dignified funerals and smell sweet and blossom in the dust after death love to work for others while the rest love to work entirely for their own interests. This is the difference between the people who live also for others and who live entirely for oneself.

I must tell it with a heavy heart that today’s youth  that celebrate the Valentine’s Day with all muss and fuss  view love  in a very degenerated intellectual and moral state— love today, marriage tomorrow, and divorce the day after— ‘Chat magni, Phat bibaha, Jhat parpachuke’ is what  they yearn as if they were born only for  quick fixes.  Such haste epitomizes nothing except the outcome of not conceiving love wholesomely. Proposing anyone— out of a whim, an emotion, a sensation, and just a thirst-quenching motive— is not a love and therefore not fair.

Talking all this while wishing for the Valentine’s Day is painful. But someone must talk such things as well. And I am always among that someone.

The divorce trend is increasingly growing these days amongst the present generation spouses and has impacted their innocent children miserably.  Researches done in this area confirm that divorce affects the children in a multifaceted way.  Children whose parents go through divorce may have a harder time in the society, and hence tend to avoid the social contacts. Sometimes children feel insecure and wonder if their parents are the only ones that have gotten divorced.

I have two questions to ask to the spouses that ultimately decide their separation: One,  why should the children that are not at all the part of the decision making between the parents suffer? Two, why should they be the innocent bystanders of divorce that in many cases turn them into the street children—the orphans?

Most studies done in this area conclude that the children of divorced spouses may suffer the following serious  problems: they display  anger  as if it were their way of life, withdraw oneself socially, they suffer academically, they go through increased crying or clinginess, they suffer from irregular  eating and sleeping habits, they get destined to be  bogged down awfully in the loyalty conflict issues from their very early childhood— whom to support when their parents quarrel—that  takes them to much awkward positions leading to  depression, they engage oneself in risky behaviors, and ultimately they face their own relationship problems when grown up.

There are without doubt several negative implications for children of divorced families. The results of   increasingly growing frequent tussles leading to divorce between the parents are grim on the children and are both disturbing and problem-creating. Children of divorce parents have higher rates of emotional instability, academic problems, social conflicts, and cognitive disadvantages vis-à-vis those from continuously married parents (Amato, 2005). It is also observed that the rates of divorce for children who grow up to marry are higher than those who come from continuously married couples (Amato and Booth, 2001).

Do the parents have rights to thrust such impacts onto the children— our most precious resources for generations and generations to come ? The answer is: a strong  no; a strong  they do not! I urge today’s people including my entire family members  to seriously ponder over this issue. The spouses may have every right to fight, quarrel and disagree as long as it does not disturb the peace of mind of the children. Once the quarrels cross their limits, children are bound to suffer till they ruin. Remember, today’s children are no other than those that could come in the new avatar of Buddha, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela,  Mother Teresa, and Joan of Arc. Let us not ruin them—let us not nip them at the very bud.

Today is Valentine’s Day. I wish everyone a very happy Valentine’s Day.