The whole economy is hit with recession... I am sure all of you know about it and if you don't I would seriously recommend picking up a newspaper or switching on the news. Recently, I got a mail that had an article from New York Times. According to that article, 5 jobs are lost every minute!! This is a bad time for you if you are an employee… three things could happen - 1. You have been fired in the recent past; 2. you are going to get fired in the near future; or you will be made to feel grateful that inspite of the economic slowdown and in the face of cost cuts, you still have a job! The third one is the worst coz then you would be expected to work from 9 in the morning till 9 in the night (if you are lucky thats is otherwise you could end up working way past midnight!!) and even after working your a** off, you are not expected to even complain about it. And God forbid, if you get late by 10 minutes after comleting a 15 hour shift, you can very well be prepared to listen (as one of my friend's boss put it very articulately), "Leaving late is no excuse for coming in late." So, if you ask me this is not a good time for employees... except for those who actually love their work and boss. but how many of such people are there actually? one maybe two?? i only know one and she loves everyone. (yes, yes i mean you only, you ice cream loving freak. Stop smiling now)
And then there are some people who had already left their jobs thinking that the recession would not effect them. But were they in for a surprise! (and people who actually know me will fully understand the implications of this statement and what i truly mean by this)
It is not only the economy that has hit a slump, it seems love and romance is also going through a tough time... or rather the people involved in them.
All around me people are in such dysfunctional relationships that it makes you think why are they in it? there is a couple who know they cant be together but cant leave each other... there is another in which the girl thinks she likes the guy but is not sure if she does and the guy, on the other hand, is making wedding plans. then there is this couple who keeps on breaking up and getting back together. then there are also couples in which the guy treats his girlfriend like s**t and in another the girl never fails to remind the guy that he is so lucky to have her in his life so he must do as she commands. These are just couple of examples... and what is unnerving is that these people (who are in these wonderfully problematic relationships) are the first to point out the absurdity of being in such relationships when the same is happening to others...
People (or some very faithful friends) have always come to me with their problems. They say i give very rational advice. Maybe because i see it as an outsider. i have always believed that to solve a problem you need to see it objectively. but the same logic and reason fails to prevail when you are facing one because to see your own problem from a third person's eye is very difficult. that is why it is very easy to give advice but very difficult to follow the same advice when the problem is your own. Maybe that explains why people in these relationships cant seem to get out.
In the last couple of months i have come face-to-face with people who know they have a problem but can't or rather don't want to do anything. While listening to them two point of views came in front of me regarding how people look at relationships. one was the cynical view when the person (one or both) involved in these relationships dont believe in love and treat it just as a relationship of convenience. they are in it for various reasons. The other one was when the people just love the idea of love.
while listening to these differing point of views many questions came up...of which i couldnt get any satisfactory answers. I failed to understand how can people be so dependent on others that they cant seem to imagine their life without the other person? Is it love? Or is it just a fear of loneliness? When someone breaks up with you and you cry your eyes out. Is it because you miss him or those are the tears of rejection? One of my very close friends would say, who by the way would like the world to believe that she is a recent convert to love cynicism, that there is nothing called love. Its just a temporary insanity that people go through from time to time to just liven things up. She knows that she is in a dead-end relationship but can not walk out on him. Why, you might ask? not because she loves him too much but because she has got used to him being around (that are her own words). So then, is love merely an addiction? Is falling in love same as getting addicted to alcohol or cigarettes? does it give the same high? and can you just get out of it by going through rehab or by using a love patch (like a nicotine one)?
But there are also love-hopefuls who believe that their prince charming is just wandering around with their glass slipper in his hands unable to find the rightful owner of the shoe. they believe that love makes the world go round... love is like walking in the clouds... it is like eating your favourite blueberry cheesecake every day... it is the feeling of happyness you get when you want something bad enough and then finally getting it... it is like dancing in the rain (if you like that)... its like getting happy high, like when you are drunk but not pukish drunk... its when eveything seems all right... they believe in romance as descried in the books and shown in the movies...
What i realized is that both are two extremes… one is too pessimistic and the other is too optimistic. if you ask me being in love is indescribable... you can't put it into words... it is not being addicted to the other person and neither it is going on candlelit dinners... and thats what makes it so special that you cant explain it... the most beautiful things in life are the ones that dont make any sense at all
you...take your pick… :)
well you know what i would pick..being the eternal pessimist..but really loved this one!!
ReplyDeleteme too.....i mean not the eternal pessimist .....but that i love it ....and the day i can confirm that the cynic u refer to is me .....i am gonna sue u .....but seriously...what u write is really true but methinks love is overrated .....i mean if love is the answer can u rephrase the question ????
ReplyDeleteFirst things first.. I had a big smile when I read this...i know where exactly did I figure out here..when ever my head said "oh that’s me!" I smiled :)
ReplyDeletebut after I finished this I was left speechless for sometime..and I am not saying this just to compliment you on your style of writing..but because inspite of being the instinctive & impulsive me, I chose to comment on this after a little while..there are times when something just hits you, and it hits you hard enough to make you sit and ponder for sometime..thats what this note did to me..
so a very well written one i must say.. :)
Now coming to what you raised, I myself have been thinking that is there a connection between money, love (what some souls call liking) & also weather. somehow since the weather changed & the economy melted everyone around me started facing problems in their romantic relationships. All of a sudden people's trust was betrayed, their love went out of the window, their judgments came out to be wrong, their beliefs got shattered, their hope got broken, and somehow the bubble just got burst. For some too late & for some too soon. But all this within a span of last few months. Back to back I got know how & what all happens in this world. How easily people walk in walk out someone’s life. Leaving them with so many questions, unanswered. That’s where your point that is love just about missing someone you had become used to of having around. It certainly is different for different people. But if it was the case, then why would someone wait for their last hope to be broken, why would someone spend more time in such a so-called relationship, knowing that they are walking towards a dead end. And at times all this takes far more time than the time you had even spent with the other person. But it so happens that in the end you can not quit till you reach that dead end, see it with your own two eyes. If you don’t do that, your brain will still be fine, but your heart will always have a feeling of regret & guilt. That what if I would have waited? What if I would have given life some time? What if there was a way out? What if things would have changed with time just like they changed all of a sudden in the first place. And there is nothing worse than that feeling of “what if”. So people keep walking on a path which has a dead end. When everyone around them is telling them that its best to take a U-turn now, it will probably hurt less. It will bring less pain, less heart ache, less cynicism, less disappointment. And they themselves know that the best “option” is to be out of this myth they are living in, that someday things might change for the better just like they went from good to bad. They know it as well as everyone else. But its just like a cat, she will close her eyes thinking that no one will watch her like this when she is having her milk. Just like that we tend to feel that by closing our eyes probably the dreaded truth will never hit us. Or hit us but hurt less. So we shut our eyes tightly, as tightly as we can, & for as long as we can. From the very beginning we can always see it coming. If we wouldn’t then who would. You think the person him/herself didn’t know. They did, they saw it far before anyone around them did, after all weren’t they the one who were into it. How could they not see it. But they still give that chance to everyone around them to say “see I told you”. They just chose to close their eyes. Its like when you reach the end of the cliff, you know you want to fall, you have to fall, even if there is no one to catch you down there. And when you know there is no one down there, you choose to close your eyes. Trying to make your self believe, that it will hurt less. Inside, you know that it will hurt the same, probably more since you will never know when the end has come. It will just hit you.
More often than not, this fall becomes important. Even if it hurts a hell lot. Only when you fall, will you be able to get up again. And slowly start walking & then running probably even dancing! But since you fell flat on your face, it will take time to heal yourself.
And people who are scared of the fall thinking that they wouldn’t be able to survive this fall should have honestly not come up the cliff in the first place. We all go up the cliff to fall, some have people to catch them, some don’t. Everyone, who wants to survive will survive, no matter how bad the fall was. But give your self that chance to fall in the first place. Only after you do that will you be able to go another cliff. In one such fall only you will realise that the one who finally did catch you when you fell was the one who truly deserved you.
But as I said it’s different for different people. In the end we always do have an option.
After this, I don’t need to say that why you consider me to be an eternal optimistic & a hopeless romantic. But trust me, I couldn’t have been more glad about it. In the middle of an ordinary life, god does give us a fairy tale, some just have to wait longer than the others.
your final paragraph is the real essence of discussion, if your really could define love you would be never able to formulate pessimism of love or extremeness of love. actually you need no logic to fall(rise) in love.
ReplyDeletewrite funny no please....i want to read megha's humourous intellect-driven peices...pretty please..see im asking so nicely...
ReplyDelete:)))