Love is a thing you keep discovering again and again in different ways... provided you are open to it. One such profound discovery happened when I was 9-10 years old, although I did not know at that time that it was profound.
There used to be a woman in our neighborhood who worked as a maidservant in several houses. Her face was what could be termed simply as "disfigured". I don't know if it was congenital or caused by an accident. It was severely contorted on the left side. The flesh near the left cheekbone was disproportionately swollen, her mouth was stretched back to the left and up somewhat permanently, she had one or two long front teeth, and several other teeth in the front were missing, she could usually be seen with dishevelled hair, wearing old rag-like clothes. She looked like a classic scary witch!
This lady had two beautiful daughters who were teenaged in those days and helped in her work. They were either twins or very close to each other in age. The girls were true South Indian nubile beauties. Dark skinned and long haired, pretty faced and slim built. Even as a 9-year-old boy, their beauty was not lost on me.
The contrast between the mother and her daughters made me wonder, how such an ugly woman could have such pretty daughters. And then I wondered about her husband. How did he feel about her? How did he marry her in the first place? Then it dawned on my little 9 year old heart and mind: he married her probably because he found her acceptable and loveable despite her looks. The thought progressed some more and I concluded that is probably true of every person in the world: no matter how ugly or undesirable they looked to the rest of the world, there must be at least one person who would like them and love them. And then my thoughts drifted to other things.
Years later, as an adult, I remembered those thoughts and conclusions I had about the maidservant in our neighborhood and I was amazed. I figured out how old I must have been at that time based on the circumstances and I was amazed again. I realized that it was truly a profound discovery, and that too for a young boy to stumble on it was a wonderful thing.
Most of us go through life as if we are not deserving enough of love. We are afraid to love or express it because we think we don't deserve it. We hold back love from others because we think they don't deserve it. All of us end up being miserly about love and acting as if there is a great scarcity of it in the world. While the fact all along is that, there is an abundance of love everywhere. Yet, daily we come across people who are malnourished with lack of love.
Scarcity of love in the world, is like the scarcity of food. The problem is not one of production, it is one of distribution. The first step to resolve the problem is to realize what I discovered when I was a 9-year-old boy: everyone is loveable. And then, to live by that realization, to love a little more and spread a little more love everywhere.
I hope the lady and her daughters, who inspired this discovery are content, happy and well-loved, whereever they are now.
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I think many people feel that they don't deserve to really be loved. And then they end up with people that are crule and accept it for what it is, for the companionship even though they are just really fooling them selves. It seems to me from your 9 year old perspective that these people really loved each other because they saw the value in it. And looking at that as a 9 year old must have been life changing even if you didn't know it untill later. I feel it gives us all something to really think about this question... What are the important things about loving someone? One should really ask themselves why they love and look at more then just the surface as you started to at the young age of 9.
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