An Abstraction called Love...

Courtesy sixth sense - humans always provide a lot of importance to abstract things than reality. As Hitler quotes in Mein Kampf, do not ask a person to fight for his bread because none will risk death to save their life. But the same person would fight for his beliefs for a man is nothing without his beliefs.

Mind, God and Love are the top 3 abstractions of man in my opinion. Whether you call it the chiasma of Frontal, Temporal and Parietal lobes or mind in simple terms, there is something inside us which characterizes us and we call it mind. In the same way the only answer to the universe's unanswered questions is God (for theists) and Energy (for physicists and Atheists). The third and rather interesting abstraction called Love deserves a special attention.

Unlike mind and God, this abstraction is a bit too polymorphic (note the usage of OOP concepts and believe that I'm a Java programmer). To make a long story short, a person can fall in love with anyone/anything ranging from a chameleon with its skin resembling a freshly erupted volcano in color and texture to a stunningly beautiful girl. So let's ignore the other meanings of love and focus on the most common usage of the word 'love' - the divine (as characterized by many) feeling between a man and a woman/a boy and a girl (usually) not from the same family who (less commonly) intend to share their lives with each other forever.

The concept of love is two dimensional - physical and mental. The possibility of someone falling in love with someone physically unattractive (as per the individual's view since beauty is completely subjective) asymptotically tends to zero. If it is something physical that keeps the individuals together then the whole divinity of love is lost and the definition of that becomes lust or infatuation as the case may be. Let's focus on the less probable more divine mental portion of love. Person A falls in love with person B purely because Person B's characters are just too good and fitting without even 0.01% consideration on the physical appearance of Person B. Isn't this divine? I'd like to quote Chanakya here - "There is some self-interest behind every relationship.
There is no relationship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth." As pessimistic and anti-social as it sounds, that is the bitter reality. Every human being is in want of something and the one who feels he's got everything becomes a Yogi. When this need is fulfilled by someone else, the company of that person makes him/her happy and that is comfortably termed love. The need may vary from a trustworthy person to provide audience to someone to fall back on for anything and everything.

So am I saying love is bad? Not at all. In fact if the belief of love never existed, world would be filled with hatred and perhaps we wouldn't have had many of the wonderful dramas, paintings, literature and sculpture that we have today. In fact, a normal human is designed this way and at one point or the other he/she considers himself/herself a better person in the company of someone from the opposite sex. But the fact remains that none is dependent on the other for existence and in the end every single person is an individual who keeps building his/her own world and the members in that world. As long as the company of someone makes me a better individual and that relationship doesn't uproot my other relationships, beliefs, esteem and tradition; I'm bound to fall in love for I'm not a saint but a normal human designed to live like a billion others. To me this means a life partner given by a inherently beautiful system called arranged marriage. I know not all would agree with this view but all said and done, that is my individual perception.

When Prakashraj was asked how could you fall in love with so many women he replied - "People often believe that I loved an individual. But I've loved and I'm in love with the concept of love". Could it be any shorter or any sweeter?