what's love got to do with it?
People, often, shirk away from the act of caring. To care for something is to put your heart out for display, inviting people to trample on it. This holds true whether you show care for a person, or a project, or an idea. So, we learn to live lives in solitude. Even when we are surrounded by people, we keep our best thoughts to ourselves. Of course, one may even go a step further. The perceived fear of public humiliation and personal failure can kill any rose plant which breaks the icy surface of our carefully crafted, rock-solid personas which are built to last in the "real world" to the point where creativity, itself, is considered poison. Follow the rules.
I was thinking about love. I was thinking about how we don't use that word in our daily life, that much. Indian people are complex, multidimensional who lead rich inner lives but even our movies seem to externalize our feelings as dance sequences. There are no somber conversation about psychology, about broken hearts and broken dreams in daily parlance. Why is it so? Do we run out of love if we utter the word itself? Is practical rationality the only mode of thinking which is intelligent?
Perhaps, quoting the Shakespearean tragedy of Romeo and Juliet won't help my case here and if we are being honest, I don't know which side I am defending but this sentence has been running through my mind for the past few days.
"My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.”
I wonder, if it is only Juliet, a mere teenage girl who has the luxury of having infinite love in her heart. If love is infinite, why do people run out of it? What do we do with our beating hearts when we grow up? Do we store it all away in the back of our minds, give away pieces of it when we are feeling kind, and go through the years, one examination after the other, academic or otherwise?
I turned sixteen last month. I am on the precipice of adulthood and I wonder if I will have a choice to decide the type of character I want to play in the stage that is the world itself or if the truth is more insidious than that. "All the world's a stage/ And all the men and women merely players" except the Real World isn't just a stage. It's a character too, the biggest player of them all.
Who should I let decide my actions? My beating heart or the mammoth that poses itself as Real? There is no reconciliation, thus far, only more questions.
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