The other side of loving

The heart is the life-sustaining organ of the body and its most important function goes beyond its physiological reason for its being. It is the major locomotive that controls and regulates all forms of human emotions, of which love is the most powerful and all-encompassing. Without the heart one becomes heartless, take away love and the heart dies.

The topic of love is timeless. It is the Muse of all Muses. Everything in the world that is beautiful and worth living for is owed to the existence of love that lives in the heart. There is a symbiotic relationship between the heart and love and the delicate connection is held by a constant continuity called loving.

Loving is a precarious but exciting state of the heart. It is expressed in many hundred small things and deeds, some knowingly and others innocently. Some forms of loving are more desired than others depending upon the expectations placed on the emotion itself. Is it an absolute commitment fulfilled by acts of devotion and loyalty. Where is the limit? Who sets the limit of one's expectation. Is the limit mutually acceptable or does each one in the party of two have individual limits for manifesting acts of loving. Can one accept that one's limit is beyond the reach of the other person so that some measure of adjustment is needed.

The need to adjust limits and expectations often create disturbance in the state of loving. This is the other side of loving, the small challenges to face now and then when love slips into a state of sluggish comfort; when one forgets that love in all its whims and caprices is constantly seeking a confirmation of its presence. If one forgets a kiss before departing for work and at homecomings, it disrupts the harmony of loving and poses a question - silly as it seems, "Does he/she still loves me?" And if there is no reciprocal hugging at the end of the day, it feels like one came to a wrong home.

The home is indeed where the heart is - a common but still valuable cliche in love and in loving. It warms up the heart when one says to the other "You are my home, you have my heart and all the love it can muster". Hearing something like this erases instantly the battles one fights outside, the disappointments in the workplace, the grievances over perceived injustices and the nagging discontent over certain failures in the management of the planet Earth.

When the other person asks in a perplexed tone: "Why do we have to quarrel when there is so much love between us?" To this I answer with the certainty of knowing that spring comes after winter - no matter how long the snow and ice suppress the lilies from bursting out of the hard-frozen ground: "Because it is all part of loving".
(The picture is a painting of Gustav Klint's famous original "The Kiss".)