A Letter to One’s Love

Dear One,

I do not know who you are, where you are or what you do. In fact I do not even know if you are there at all. I sincerely hope you do exist somewhere in this world 🙂  I want to let you know that I love you.

I understand love as ‘positive other centerdness’. Since childhood I have cherished the possibility of having an ‘other’ one at all times. Even as a child I imagined you sending me off for work, care for me when I fell sick, teach my kids good ways, give me tea when I got back home and also treat my parents with love and respect.

As I grew up I imagined a greater role for me in our relationship. I think of cooking good food for you, helping your relatives live stable and productive lives, play with our children, do the mundane things like shopping and cleaning. I also think of caring for your parents in their old age.

Somehow you had been a part of my life.You had been in the future of my past, though you have never figured into my present. I have saved money for our wedding, just in case you do not have any savings. Even though I have planned it to be a simple event, it could be from my pocket itself.  I think it is absloutely useless to waste life’s savings of parents in grand wedding receptions. I have also saved enough money for a Cesarean Section if it were to be required for you within the first year of our marriage. I cannot insure your health now, right! 🙂 I know that marriage is a complicated thing. It affects  plans that people make. I too realize that  I might have to change my ‘present’ plans of my future. You might have observed that you have some connection with me from my past well into my future .

As I lived through a third (maybe half) of my life, I have at times mistakenly felt that somebody was you. It was the grace of God that I realized in short spans of time that this probably was not the case. In that sense I have spared myself the emotional trauma of a ‘love failure’. So at times I find it difficult to empathize with one’s who have such trauma. One might sat that they did not match up to my expectations and therefore I did not take any active steps. Don’t worry. It is not so. It was a matter or timing or direction in life that made my non-choice easy. That was why I did not commit to anybody. In fact my expectations are below average in many dimensions compared to many.

Someone might say that I probably backed out from possibilities due to fear of rejection. It possibly could well be true. Consider this, if that were so I would have tried to change my self to fit into someone’s choice categories to be accepted. Is it not? As I look back, I think I have made major life decisions based on what I felt was good and what I felt was right. It was not based on what felt good, either to me or another. So that possibility is not probably true.

They say there are five love languages-words of affirmation,quality time, gifts, acts of service and physical touch. I think there is a sixth language beyond these.That is the language of commitment. It is the quality of  being bound and staying put. Interestingly the first five need another person to be expressed. The last one could be practiced even in anticipation.

I heard an accomplished film actor say that he ‘loved’ his wife but was ‘not in love’ with her. I thankfully do not have such moral schizophrenia. But I could well be a mad fool of a different kind.  That is for glorifying commitment to a greater level than what the society deems necessary. Is it not completely acceptable to marry another person if a spouse dies? To me, it is difficult to imagine another person in your place. It is easier to think of living in grief for rest of the life. I understand such romantic idealism is meaningless. But still I would not mind that. I know that even if you die, I might grieve for a while but I would not get depressed. I would get on with life after penning a  few pages of dard-e-dil shayari (emotional poetry in Urdu). I might choose to do some better things, like helping ones who are more hurt by life. I might do somethings that you would have done to make the world a better place.

I wonder what is it that ties me to you but at the same time keeps me as an individual. I would be happy to call it maturity. Others might call it illusory, be it illusion of love or illusion of individuality. I also wonder what might draw attention of an inattentive person like me to you. It may be what you do when you are off the stage and when the spotlight is not on you. Answers to questions like – What you live for? What you give for? Who your friends are? Who are your foes? Why have you won your foes? How do you live? and the God you serve may draw my attention. Finally, I would consider you as God’s gift to me. I promise to keep myself as God’s gift for you too.

Your assets disappear in an instant, your beauty  fades in a day.

You get dependent in a decade, I would love you as ever I pray.

Yours faithfully, hopefully, lovingly…

Your missing complement

Disclaimer:

No. I am not in love. The letter is just a medium to convey my ideas regarding love.