"You may like the way i look but i look the way i am like. Now would you like to know me or would you like me to know that you only like me for my looks ?? " - Brock Tully
Sometimes I wonder what it takes to love and be loved. Loving someone may not be as great as being loved by someone to the same degree and extent if not more and with a selfless motive. Today love seems to have been influenced by global festivals like Valentine's day and the media and the youth is under tremendous presure to "fall" in love. A hostile environment seems to have been created for someone who is single as most of the pubs, parties and events only let in couples. The print and visual media seems to run out of space and time giving a complete coverage of celebrity couples' romantic lifestyle. The malls and theatres are all teeming with young couples roaming around hand-in-hand. Certain web portals who claim to be doing a social service by conducting mind-boggling surveys about all possible things on earth give out fantastic statistics about how remote the chances of finding a soul mate get with advancing age. All this has led to the feeling among the young crowd that they should have a partner atleast before they get out of the college or else they will remain single forever. And the hunt for the perfect soul mate begins.
The three or more years that one spends in a college gives a good opportunity to find a soul mate. Lonliness and home sickness accelerates this process and one keeps trying to fall in love at every available opportunity. Love is blind. The lucky few do manage to find their dream mates and then they get lost forever in their own world in a corner in the library or the canteen or the reading rooms planning their future. The final year finally gets over and most of the couples are seen parting ways in pursuit of their career or higher studies. Only a handful pursue their heart and get married. Those who part ways suddenly seem to get enlightened that love is not the only thing in life. They feel they need to plan for their career first as falling in love is all in their hands and they can do so whenever they feel the need to. In this act they fail to realise that their partner might not be thinking the way they do and there is a emotional break down. Whereas one walks out of the relationship laughing at it, the other vows never to fall in love again. In most of the cases it is the female partner who undergoes this trauma. Her life takes a new turn.
The breakup and the shattered dreams put her into a state of depression and she cries day and night. Gradually she learns to live with the reality. However it is during this time that she comes across someone who seems to show a lot of care and support to her. An already weak and hurt heart finds solace in the comforts of this new man. Love continues to remain blind. The sugar-coated promises and picturesque dreams give new hopes to her already shattered dreams. She considers herself mature enough and forgets her vow and thinks she has now found her real soul mate and falls in love again. All her little things are faithfully taken care of, right from recharging her cell to booking her flight tickets, from finding her accomodation to giving her expensive gifts. But somewhere deep down inside she feels all this is artificial. The love has only remained to be materialistic. She begins to feel the suffocation. The guy seems to be totally dis-interested in her. He too is running for his career and money. She considers him selfish, irresponsible and in-sensitive. She recollects all those moments spent with him when she was happy, sad, angry and mad only to find that moments of happiness were just a handful and momentary. The guy does not seem to be un-nerved. She walks out of the relationship. She realizes he was just a material and not a mate. She becomes single again and her search for the perfect soul mate goes on.
This might just be an exaggerated story but it is not too far from reality. Finding true love, a soul mate may be possible at the click of a mouse as claimed by certain dating websites but a love that touches one's soul, a love far from the materialistics fancies, a love that lets one keep one's identity may be a little too hard to find. Quotes that say "Do not marry someone whom you love , marry someone who loves you" or "Do not marry the one whom you can live with, marry someone whom you cannot live without" seem to be biased towards one person only. Love and happiness should be felt and shared equally by both the partners....
