The Forever Of Love

By Chitra Chidambaram

I was a child. He slapped me. I still clung to him. He was my father. I was an adult. He slapped my ego. I left him. He was my lover. Today, I receive so many slaps from life but I do not forsake life. I still cling to it. Life is my father, my lover, my God. I drop my ego when life berates me, hits me, even literally throws me off a cliff. I keep clinging to life. I know life is being good to me, doing good to me and accept whatever it does coz life is my real father, my cosmic mother that birthed me.

Do I know life well? No. I just know that life knows me and there is no point in knowing life. Did I know my father or mother? No. I just knew they were my father, my mother and wanted the best for me. I loved them unconditionally despite their apparent, invisible flaws, their appearances. I may not have liked everything about them, I may have even hated them at times, but I simply knew they were mine and I belonged to them. I felt them, felt them in my bones, my skin, my soul, felt their love for me and felt secure in their love for me. There were no conditions in their love or my love. We just belonged. I now feel belonged with my friends too. They are in my skin, my bones, my blood. Life feels like life with them. They are my new parents. If I could harbour the same feelings for the one, I say I love, wouldn't life be beautiful? If I could overlook the flaws and love life in everybody, how heavenly would life be, right? I may feel for them but sadly I don't feel them. I try to know them and I don't like what I know so I can't love them. The child in me loved everybody coz she felt everybody, simply felt their love in her. The adult in me tries to know everybody, can't feel them the same way, can't love without conditions that she puts in fine print and hence breaks, leaving pieces of her in them, pieces that liked them. We all carry bits of everybody that we like, once liked. Maybe that's why we say, 'love you to bits', right? We are scattered in bits everywhere with scattered bits of others in us. Little wonder they say, 'The world is in us'. If only we could stop wanting to know the one we love and love the ones we know, we could bring alive the child in us that is still clinging to the adult in us, living because of us, eternally loving us as we are. This is the 'forever' of love. This is love.

By Chitra Chidambaram