Love

Love

From enjoying those late night heartwarming conversations to spending the night staring at the ceiling reflecting about ourselves, love has all got us there, sometime. Gaur Gopal Das, an engineer turned lifestyle coach elucidates love as a great blend of caring and daring, daring to stand up and accept the person completely regardless of their faults and shortcomings and caring to strive for the physical, emotional, spiritual welfare of the person whom we love. As a matter of fact, love is more about giving and less about expecting in other words it is an effort to love someone unconditionally. Love is to invest emotionally in to someone knowing that the rate of return is zero and the biggest disappointment is that there is no emotional insurance. It would not be an exaggeration to say that love brings with it, suffering.

The Buddhism has suggested four elements of true love as: Maitri, Karuna, Mudita and Upekcha. As I finish explaining these elements, perhaps our perception of true love may not remain the same. Maitri is translated as kindness and benevolence. It is someone’s honest efforts to love by comprehending and being on the same page with the other person. Karuna refers to compassion; to empathize with someone and help ease their suffering. One cannot master Karuna without developing Maitri because we cannot be compassionate without really understanding someone. Sometimes the best way to be compassionate might be to just listen. The third element Mudita signifies happiness. Happiness is not merely the absence of problems but our ability to deal with it. Just being able to cope with problems doesn’t mean you’re happy, you should really enjoy doing so. If your love has only gloominess to offer, it isn’t true love according to the Buddhist philosophy. The final of the four elements is Upekcha meaning freedom. Personal space can be defined as the physical as well as the psychological space immediately surrounding someone, into which encroachment can feel threatening or uncomfortable. For love to bloom there should be mutual respect for each other’s personal space and freedom. It’s often said you do not find true love you make one, we can do that by grooming these four elements in us and in our better half.

Now some of you might say, love regardless of being true didn’t work out. Often, people suffer on emotional level on the label of true love. I know it hurts straight from the heart, but maturity isn’t always to listen your heart. Suffering isn’t love, let alone true love. It is a byproduct of love and we should always look forward to quantifying it to a minimum. For that a little personal reflection with reinforcement of the four elements of love should do us all good. I remember the famous quote by William Jennings Bryan, Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” After reading this, if you really think he/she is your guy go for achieving your love even if you couldn’t you won’t have to regret that you didn’t give it a shot. As vague as the explanation of love may sound, we never fail to have one and every time the exposition is entirely different because at all we are discovering something new about it. That’s why for me love is a constant learning process throughout life.

Love comes to us in a most unexpected way when we may not be ready for it just yet but that’s the beauty of it. Look around, you might have just met the love of your life. If you feel you have one, embrace it and nurture it you are getting there to the level you wanna find. Have a great day everyone. Live, love laugh and don’t forget to enjoy! 😊


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