It’s not enough that a man be born,
he must learn to live. It’s not enough that a man should live; he must learn to
love and master to bear the pain, thrill and excitement that comes with love. What
can be more exhilarating than to be in love? Though one must also note that to give
one’s heart, is not only to give that person the right to love you back but
also the power to hurt as well. No
matter how close or how emotionally connected we are with another person, to
a large extent we still can never fully know and understand another person’s design,
which predominantly structures why they behave the way they do, their motivations,
belief system, philosophies, passions, dreams and goals. At best we
can only derive an approximation based on assumption of their full thinking
process. Come to think of it, assumption
they say is the least form of knowledge. The manufacturer of the mind, God, describes
his own product saying. “The heart is a twisted thing, not to be searched
out by another mortal: who is able to have knowledge of it?”
Questions
relating to when you should make known or public your love affair and whether
true love is blind or crippled has always and will ever remain subjective topical
love issues. Love is a great motivator and inspiration in every relationship but
the fact that we fall into it probably explains why a one time lover gets
demoted to suddenly become “a good friend” like we say it when the whole thing
is dwindling away into history or a foe when things become terribly sour. Maybe
when we begin to walk, against falling in love, love might restore its blind sight.
“When
you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have
different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place, you
see somebody, and you deal with their image, that’s their image. It’s part of them;
it’s not the whole picture. ” pop idol and six-time Grammy award winner,
Whitney Houston, told Rolling Stone in 1993. Yeah love is all that matters and it does
conquers all things, but when maturity meets with love, it births a superior
orientation that makes one see common sense beyond a common tool in any
relationship because it hurts to be left alone by someone you love. It
hurts to love someone who can't love you back. But what hurts the most is to
end a relationship that was never even destined to start. For instance If a bird falls in love with a fish,
where would they live? Who gets the fins and who loses the wings? It's an
irony. That's how cruel but poetic love can be. Many are of the opinion that if
Whitney Houston never met Bobby Brown, probably her life would have been less
tragic and far from a striking cautionary tale.
Even when we eventually settle with
that bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, the question of whether love is
enough still arises. I’ve repeatedly heard those married for donkey years say
things like “understanding, patience and endurance is all that matters” some
out of their own personal ‘not so exciting’ experiences go as far as
categorically predicting that you should at some point expect that your spouse
will come up with characters and traits absolutely synonymous of a stranger,
and you just beginning to wonder where on earth you got this person from. This
is far from the image of love the media paints. They only showcase the feel
good hormonal responses that bind two people initially, and then they edit
reality away. “There isn’t a perfect relationship, the major point is to move
forward” a married adult friend once stressed to me.
Let me
share the misery of a man I read some years back in one of those Funmi
Akingbade’s sex and sexuality columns on Saturday Punch Newspaper. This
particular man was demanding for help to manage his psychological trauma. After
forgiving his wife, he still had issues struggling with the mental play back of
another man’s sex organ inside her. This
happened after both partners in a playful atmosphere asked questions related to
how they coped when both were temporarily separated by distance. The woman at
one point confessed that she had a onetime secret affair. She must have summoned
enough calories of courage most likely because she couldn’t hold the guilt anymore. In
response to the man’s challenge, the columnist scolded him for indulging in
such a risky fact finding in the first place and like you would expect, he was
advised to move on. And at the minute you critically consider the effort and
investment that relationships consumes, and the contagious effect of divorce on
the children and others. ‘To move on’ becomes quite a handy response.
That
you love one another doesn’t really guarantee all the happiness, the feel good
feeling will die and probably resurrect again. The long married says it takes a
whole lot of conscious effort from both parties to keep it alive. In fact, that
hard work and conscious effort is what they refer to as love. There is so much
to great relationship than love.
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