This question triggered a series of other questions.
What is the scarcest commodity in the world - oil, water, gold?
None of these but lovers are the scarcest commodities in the world as only a rare few are au fait in loving fellow beings.
Why do we remember the day from a past decade when we shared our food with a hungry stranger more than the gossips of a kin that happened last Sunday?
And how can we use the term unconditional love when love is always unconditional?
If a condition is involved, even a trifle, then it is bondage or alloyed versions of love.
Bondage in relationships ties us down to something. It is a give and take without a contract. This means we have a need to expect something from others. When this need is met we feel happy and if not we feel put down.
Our world of happiness, hence, is not of our own making but that of others. If being happy is the basic nature of humans, we rely on others for this very basic need.
In other words we beg something from that person to whom we are bound. We become slaves.
Love, which is hailed by every culture, every nationality over centuries, can’t obviously be about begging or being entangled in slavery. No sensible person will approve of begging or slavery.
So love has to be something else.
What is love?
Love is all about giving. When you love, you are majestic, magnanimous and full of energy, like the sun. You are giving and at the same time overflowing & not begging anything back or scheming against anybody.
So love, by definition, is unconditional. No wonder all religions hail this one quality and place it way ahead of all other qualities. If one can learn to be a ‘lover’ in the truest sense of the word, she has grown beyond the need of / for a religion.
Love is a natural bounty transcending all religions and differences.
To start with, it is hard to love even one person in our lives unconditionally, leave alone the world.
But once we develop the ‘giving trait’ it becomes easy and might take a lifetime to expand the same for the entire world.
Saints all over the world have done this.
We have seen sterling examples in Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc and Mata Amritanandamayi et al., who have been champions in love.
Well, these are great people and what’s so great in great people being great?
The fact is all of us have loved – say, when we shared our food with a stranger or when we laughed for those ‘not-so-great jokes’ because that child was raining laughter or when you felt better from the concerned look on your dog’s eyes when you were down with flu or whenever we did a ‘life-changing-something’ to somebody and when we said ‘nothing’ to his question of ‘can I do anything for you?’
If it was pretty easy for you to recall such instances, it not only means that you have really loved but also that love has such powerful, staying power in memory.
It stays because it’s the purpose of our lives.
Tainted versions of love are easily forgotten because they are strained with conditions, expectations or crafty manipulations.
So love stays and distortions wither away.
We seek permanence in everything in a temporary world. Deep inside we really are hooked up with the ‘happily-ever-after’ concept. We plan for eternity, believe we will stay young and healthy always.
But since everything is transient, all along, we have been naturally after the unnatural.
The only saving grace is the staying power of love. Therefore our natural need for permanence can be met only by love.
‘Hence love is for what I created you’ replied God.
