He loves me… he loves me not… he loves me… he loves me not…? As childish as this may sound, it seems to have become a principle on which woman have organized their world and being. Gone are the days when this was nothing but an innocent and simple game which little girls recited over and over while laying on the grass plucking flower petals anticipating the answer so that they could laugh it off and try again. It has now become an obsession where that flowers’ growth has become dependant on and not protected by ‘he loves me’.
We’ve all heard those tired clichés about Love. “Love comes in mysterious ways” and “You’ll just feel it”. For me, a 19 year old living in our generation, these statements seem almost to be ramblings and hold no ground. Women today conform more than ever to their desperation of being loved and appreciated by a man, so that they would do anything “to be completed by my other half”. But, what is it exactly to be ‘complete’? “To be truly in love and when you have found The One”, said one of my friends. What she failed to acknowledge was the reality that the word ‘Love’ has become commercial, that it is just that…a word, especially when it is used hand-in-hand with the games that people seem to always play.
I guess having been raised in a background where my parents were divorced when I was very young may have an influence on how I now perceive ‘Love’ and men, but what I have observed has had an even greater influence. Like Yogi Berra, I believe that ‘you can observe a lot just by watching’, and I guess scrutinizing how different people are capable of becoming after getting what they really want only watered the seed that was planted by my parents. “Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It’s a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more then your own sense of balance and your choice of partner”, a quote from Amy Bloom which may account for my emotional two left feet which I may have developed as a result of my parents’ constant stepping on each other toes and swaying to a broken tune as I attempted to learn how to read the music which they danced to and keep count of their steps.
Excuse me for ‘not speaking from experience’, as this is the reply I get when I express my opinion concerning most issues such as those of Love and manifesting affection as I am comparable to an “Ice Queen”, said Thando, one of my closest acquaintances (who had a similar childhood to mine and seems to have been affected by the separation of her parents too, but manifests this in a different manner which is a complete contrast to mine). What I fail to understand, though, is since when does experience give one heightened? Take for example a very common scenario where two people are involved in a relationship and one is mistreating the other, those involved almost never see as they are blinded by the illusion of what they think they have. Therefore surely it is only logical that, for instance, ‘Love’ just like everything else is a concept right? Everyone perceives this concept in different ways, hence the cliché ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. This leads to my point: experience has no significance in ‘matters of the heart’, love specifically. Everyone, including myself -who has not experienced love (according to those who claim to know me)- has access to emotion, intellect, rationalism, logic, thought. It would seem rather absurd that I would not be able to conceive of Love.
So, what is it to be ‘complete’? it seems rather illogical that one human can complete another. Haven’t we all experienced the unpleasant wrath of humans always disappointing us? Most do it occasionally, others rarely and a minority hardly ever do, but they do. So why risk being ‘completed’ by a man who you know will let you down? A man who needs you through their ‘hard’ times and only says “I love you” when they are ‘up’? Isn’t this alone enough to convince you of how much worth you are? Women. Being complete starts from the aim of becoming the right person…not going out there “searching for my soul mate” or going through several relationships looking for the right person.
Becoming the right person? “Huh?”, you may ask. It all becomes less cryptic when you open up completely… and no not your legs but your heart, not to a man, not to a human , but something that knows your path, something that is unvarying and exists beyond the physical, the First mover, God. “Ag whatever” may be your response, but how far have you gotten in life? How much have you been let down and been miss-understood, miss-lead and experienced emotional abuse, neglect and submissiveness? I am not stating that God has your partner ready for you in an embellished box and ribbon, but He equips you with the sufficient skills, knowledge, thought, emotion, rationalism and intellect to make the right decision.
Most females miss out on this crucial part of life and therefore fail to comprehend the outcomes of their lives and especially their relationships, believing just like Thomas Andrew (the architect of the Titanic) that, “This ship is so great not even God can sink it”.
‘Love is blind’, one of the statements I could not agree with more. Some women are continuously beaten, but fall for the same excuses and forgive him because “I love him” and he says he “loves me”. Other women are continuously made conscious about him making moves on her best friends, but choose to believe hi because he says he “loves me”. I thought by now most females would have understood the fact that in most cases the word LOVE for females is in all senses a verb and just a physical action for men. It is beyond me how something so sacred and of transcended essence can have such outcomes just because of it being misinterpreted and rushed into. There is truly a thin line between love and hate, but only because it is made to be.
Unlike Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, I believe that Love alone is not capable of bringing two souls together in such together in such a way that they complete and fulfill each other. What joined two souls is what is deepest within themselves yes, a self awareness and essence which they can only recognize and become through God.
Maybe you might be confused about what Love actually is, it’s very nature and meaning and may therefore want a grammatical and linguistic definition for it. Unfortunately I do not have an answer to that because Love, to me is too complex a decision, not a sensation or an ecstasy. It’s a decision which endures anything and everything if made from the heart; it’s comparable to the sound of thought, the texture of a dream…and the birth and growth of time…
We Have All heard Those Words,
