Of love, I speak

Love ....well, I won't even know where to begin from. Anyway, let's make an attampt at least. This one turned out to be a little long though.
I've always found love something really fascinating and interesting. As a matter of habbit I always try to analyze anything, everything, anyone and everone :) that interests me. My inputs in this regard, have particularly been the incidents and the phenomena (seems like the right word) that I have seen and also my personal experiences. Right from school, somehow my perception of love and relationships has always been very different from that of the people around me. Now, I don't know who was right and who was wrong but I've had my own beliefs, just like everyone else. In school, when people used to talk about being "senti" for a particular girl or guy, I found it hard to believe how someone could really think of things like that. I mean, we were just kids, we didn't have a direction, we didn't know where life would take us. Love just didn't seem right at that point of time. I knew some people who were supposedly "going around" (dunno where that term came from). I would look at them and feel that this isn't love. It is just an attraction... perhaps a part of growing up. This doesn't mean that I was never in the company of girls. In fact, I had many girl - friends (intentional -) in school. But I never felt that I could go ahead with someone for my entire life... I always thought that it was too quick to make a call like that. Overall by the end of school, my concept of love, still pretty different from the general public, was that of a platonic relationship. For me, friendship and love meant no difference. I thought I had the perfect explanation for the phenomena called love - Love is mutated form of friendship, where the feeling of togtherness is so strong that you could do anything for that friend of yours. Now with this idea, there was no difference between the two sexes. I could potentially love a guy as much as I would love a girl. I felt happy and satisfied having found the answer to the question which, even most adults fail to answer.
But there was a major flaw. Something I realised once i was in college. I had ignored the basic fact that girls and boys are not the same. You cannot "be" the same with boys and girls. Starting from the differences that nature has created, there are different behavioral patterns and perceptions, and of course, one cannot rule out the social factors. Overall, the "code of conduct" has to differ when you are with a boy or a girl. So, once again, I was dragged back to the same question - are love and friendship essentially the same thing??? I have always been a person with an open mind full of rebel ideas. Should I accept defeat at understanding love, or open my mind to things which the society wouldn't approve of. Anyway, I decided to win and so, came the policy of no discrimination. But what about the physical aspect of relationships??? Something that I had been totally ignoring in the name of platonic relationships. I had always drawn a line but with age, this line seemed to be getting thinner and thinner and I began to realize that there's nothing called platonic when it's between me and a girl. I had to make space for sexual behaviors too. I broadly classified people in two categories - Ones for whom love and sex and closely related and others, for whom love and sex and two different things, with me belonging to the second category. I put sex a level below food, water and air. You need it like everyone else does. So, why create so much fuss about it??? I had to be right, for I had the logic and the reasoning in my favour.
But then what about marriage??? As per what I believed, marriages made no sense at all. They looked like a simple social drama and infidelity seemed so correct and obvious. Once again I had to do some more thinking. Mom was really helpful with this one and in one of my debates with her, came the point of a sane social order. To preserve the social order, you need to have rules, rather laws. I accepted that. I think she's right. The social order should be preserved else we would be reduced to animals. I haven't been very appreciative of the society as such... for a man who believes in absolute freedom, in a world without rules, it is a little difficult to honour the social code. Well, with time I learned the need for the society and I'm fine with it now. But the basic question still remains - what is this love thing all about?
Then came a personal experience of having been involved in serious commitment once. When i was "in love", I was the strongest man on earth. I was invincible. I had the might to move the world the way i wanted. Had a simple mutation in a friendship with a girl given all that might to me??? I don't think so... I believe that, that power was always there in my mind. Love harnessed it just like we now harness the, once hidden, power of the atom. I know now, that it is a state of mind. Basically, the funda is straight... guys and girls generally love eachother and fitting in the social order, we do have to settle down with "the one" ...and well, if you have to get only one of the cookies, why not shoot for the one best suited for you. So, ultimately it is the satisfaction of choosing your own cookie. Everyone wants to be strong and the best way is to harness the power of the mind using love as the reactor. So, put is simple words, people fall in love because they want to. I can't help it, but whenever I meet a girl, my first thought is that is this my cookie :D. You can choose your feelings and decide when to take the leap of your life. I still go by my first thought that love is a mutated form of friendship where you are emotionally so close to the other person that your mind unleashes its ultimate power. Physical closeness might be a consequence but should not be mitaken for the cause. ...and talking about rules, well, there are no rules if there is no commitment and if there is a commitment, a man of honour would have respect for it. Marriage is an important social institution and it should not lose its sanctity. Just that people need to open up a little and accept and respect the pre-marital personal life of their partner for they've had their own.
There would be people who won't appreciate this attempt of mine because they want to believe in the supremacy of love. For them, trying to explore love in this manner is like challenging their religious faith. Well, ignorance is bliss. Love doesn't lack logic, it's we who want a way to rise above all reason and practicality. It's the deepest desire to do something big.
Talking personally, I don't think love is blind and i don't think there's anything like falling in love, though being in love feels like as if you've been knocked off the edge of high cliff. When it comes to deciding a yes or no for a girl, my eyes are not closed and I am absolutely concious. In fact, most of us are... though we might not like to believe it because we want to preserve love as something tender and soft. We want to believe that love has no practicality attached and is purely from the heart ...and of course, we want to enjoy that drop off the cliff with eyes closed but then the depth also matters. Sometimes, you'll fall through your life and sometimes might hit the ground much quicker and end up hurt and broken ...anyway, everyone falls the first time ;). So, look before you leap!!!

--
EclipsE