VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL: LOVE, LOST & FOUND

“’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam: 27

Tennyson’s words ring true in me because I am one amongst the millions since the dawn of humanity who had lost love.

The First Bloom Of Love

I was 17, in school and enamored by a girl whom I thought was the sweetest thing I had ever set eyes on. She had a cute way about her, always in a hurry in her ponytail which made her look like a little squirrel scurrying around in the high school we both were studying in. It helped that she drove her own car, which kind of made me see the enormous opportunities that awaited me in terms of my mobility as a car-less teenager.

I was young, pumped up and ready to take on a romantic challenge… with this sweetest girl who not only caught my eye, but my head, heart and entire being too! Yes, I was totally in “love” and rushed headlong into a relationship with her. But as fate would have it, hardly a year had passed when she dumped me. That was it. End of relationship. Plug pulled.

I was shattered… words could not describe the utter shock and betrayal I felt at that time. She had left without a word, not even a goodbye. Yes, this sounds “cliched”. And it looks trivial. After all, what is a single teenage “love” compared with the millions of others that involve great men and women and which are even more tragic?

This is where I would like to end my story. For my intention is not to tell a story about lost love, but to share a little more about what I have discovered about “real love”, since those days ago.

The Inner Love Of Self

Our lives are a most precious thing, every breath of which is to be breathed in experiencing ourselves for who we really are. Even in defeat, we have a most precious experience to learn from, and having learned, to rise to success. Do not toddlers have to take more than a few falls before they can walk their first full steps? For some of us, this is the same with our experience of love, that there shall be one, or even more than one, heartbreaks along the way before we find the one who is best for us, as contracted by our souls.

The ancient Greeks tell us that there are 7 kinds of love: Eros: romance, Ludus: teasing, Philia: friendship, Philautia: self-love, Agape: universal, Pragma: long-term and Storge: parental. To me, the 7 loves can be distilled to just 2: the inner love of self and the outer love for what’s not self. The love of self, is the root of all other loves ranging from the love for one’s lover to the love for one’s God.

So to all lovers out there, love yourself first. Then only can you love your other half, partner or spouse.

Love Must Be Felt

Proclamations of love are not enough. Love must be felt in you.

Close your eyes, pay attention to the area around your heart and feel love. Feel love’s lightness, tenderness, sweetness. Enjoy your feelings towards the one you love. You are feeling good and enjoying the unguarded moment, expanded in the freedom of surrender.

Love is opening your heart in full acceptance of the person you love.

Love can make you cry spontaneously, because you feel in you the softness and gentleness of the other person’s heart as you surrender and make a genuine connection with love. There is no more separation because you feel the other as you feel yourself, that he or she is only as human as you are and yearns to experience love as much as you do.

Be it the love of a parent, the love of a child, the love of a brother, the love of a sister, the love of a teacher, the love of those who serve, the love of those who help the distressed, all these loves are the same love you have for your lover, for they are ultimately the love that emanates from you, a Divine spark of the eternal Universe.

As for me, I am thankful to the universe that I had loved and lost, for in losing love I had found where it truly lies – within me.