Recently I spoke to a friend of mine who told me that he is in love with a girl since childhood. He is somehow stuck in those childhood feelings till now even when he didn’t meet her for more than 20 years. I told him it was not possible because to love someone you need to be with that person, hold that person, feel that person and get absorbed in that person, otherwise it’s just a thought that haunts you like a shadow, it’s not real but its still there nevertheless.

He was adamant that what he feels for the girl is pure, eternal, true love. I’m a very practical person and I fail to understand human emotions many times. For me life has always been black and white. I care about tangible things – things that you can hold and feel. Anything that slips from the hands like smoke is something I cannot comprehend. So for someone like me it was very difficult to understand what is this eternal love emotion.

This deep thinking about feelings made me relate to a book that I’m currently reading – “Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami”. The book has a very interesting premise. Its based on a painter who after separating from his wife decides to live secluded on top of a mountain. During his stay there, he encounters a weird character that can take any shape, any form…the character is actually an “IDEA”. An Idea that stays with you, an Idea that travels with you, an Idea that talks with you, an Idea that guides you and Idea that can do anything that you want it to do.

Maybe Love is an Idea that one creates in their mind for a feeling that they cannot otherwise name. Friendship, care, devotion, etc., I get all these feelings because they are tangible, you can feel them. For e.g. if you care about someone you would take care of that person when he/she is sick or if you have strong devotion for someone you would follow their preaching / teachings. But love has no measurement, what do you do when you love someone or rather what are you supposed to do when you love someone?

All other feelings have a set of rules defined for them but love has no rules. People mould it as per their own desires and requirements. For instance, consider love between married couple. I have in all my life never seen 2 couples behave in same way, some would always walk hand in hand, some keep calling non-stop, some have sex every night, some even have open marriage. If we are to go by the norm that married couples are often in love then how come all behave different. Is love something that you can change as you please or is love such a low level feeling that people have moulded it since ages to suit their own situation.

For me love doesn’t exist because most of the relations that I have seen based on the premise of love are in essence hollow. A relation based on care, respect, trust or even fear is a lot stronger than one based on love. I told my friend also that what he feels for the girl is not love but maybe an obsession of unknown because they are not together now. Maybe what he feels is an Idea that has been clouding his thoughts since long and have taken up their own comfortable space in his memories. Sometimes its just easy to let old thoughts clobber your mind rather than opening up to new memories because we fear – what if opening to new memories will be like opening pandora’s box….Silly humans, we worry too much about “Ideas” that are not even real.