Love's Parasite

Love is a strange word,she thinks.Does it even have anything to do with marrying and raising babies and paying loans?Was she better off without it?
- The Wait

Yes and no! Love, per se, has nothing to do with marrying, raising babies or paying loans. Those things are all features (trappings!) of a relationship.

It is quite common for most of us to confuse relationships and love. Many of us, especially the romantic ones like the erstwhile Libran Lover, would insist that a relationship and love are indeed one and the same. The truth is that they are not.

A relationship is a deal, a very specific agreement, a transaction. With commitments. With expectations. Limited in scope. Fragile. Binding.

Love is a poem of freedom. A wild naivete. A flight of the spirit. An ache in the heart, a flutter in the tummy, a warmth in the loins. It is infinite. Resilient. Unbound. Unpredictable.

Primal, wild love is the natural state of our souls and spirits. A restraining, civilized relationship is not. Yet, we voluntarily accept the bounds and limitations of a relationship, confining our spirits, taming our wild natures, accepting pain and putting up with disappointments. We do that in the hope that a relationship will assure us a predictable, constant supply of love... from a source which is outside ourselves.

The promise that a relationship will give us constant, consistent love forever is an impossible long-standing myth that humans have accepted. The lure of everlasting love is such that, we have voluntarily chosen to contain, restrain and tame the innocent wilderness in our hearts and loins. Yet, there is no constant supply source of love which is external to us.

The only constant source of love we can depend on is our own heart. Only our own heart can love us at all times, be with us through all the ups and downs of life. Only our loving heart has the power to bring beauty and love to us from the external universe. Nothing else can - not material success, nor external beauty, nor even a committed relationship.

In fact, over the years, the human concept of a relationship - full of impossible expectations and rules and restrictions and disappointments - has become a parasite of love. The very relationship which was supposed to provide an assured source of love, has become a parasite which sucks all the beauty, power and value from love.

And us humans, who are conditioned to nurture, protect and feed this parasite, are doomed!