BENGALURU: Is love about the present, or is it about the future? Can you keep your feelings really about whatever you feel in the here and now with whoever you are having all these feelings, or would you really want to know where these feelings are going to lead, a road ahead that you might walk together, where these feelings find a safe place to be and you can go on experiencing them together for a long time to come?
Next to the fear and trepidation of admitting your feelings in those three simple words, “I love you,” the scariest few words may just be, “Where do you see this going?” or “Do we have a future together?” The risk of finding you don’t share the same vision of a future together can just be too big to take.
Love is something so special and precious, and with the pressures of time and everything else that individuals have going on in their lives, being able to keep love as a constant in the future might just mean to make some compromises in one or more of the other things in life. It takes an awful lot of stars to align to have perfectly great careers, family, personal hobbies and everything else for all the people in a loving relationship, along with letting the love for one another get richer and deeper.
Sometimes, it is tempting to not really think about anything about the future at all and just be in the here and now, enjoy the deliciousness of being together, the simple pleasures of seeing each other, getting to know every single thing about one another’s bodies, thoughts, histories, beliefs and all the other things that makes a person a person, and do that as if nothing else exists outside this particular bubble not ever thinking about what might cause that bubble to burst.
Treating love as a purely here and now sensation, something that one can delight in like one might delight in a great meal at a Michelin star restaurant or the one perfect sunset on a Goan beach, and being able to stay happy in the memory of that high without really wanting to stay in that high might seem something close to a spiritual experience. To be able to experience love so purely and so thoroughly in the present, without being attached to the idea of keeping that love ongoing forever, and being present so completely, staying happy that one was able to love and feel loved, without feeling shattered should it not continue, might seem like the truly eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, but is it? Would you really want that kind of perfection?
Or, even if it was quite the painful thing to go through, would you want a different perfection – if love should end, would you want to be able to cry for it, weep for your broken heart and the lost love, and wish for a different love with which you could have a real future?(The author is a counsellor with InnerSight)