One and only pursuit
Is there a higher calling than love? The short answer is no. The long answer could be.. erm… longer.
Is there a higher calling than love? The short answer is no. The long answer could be.. erm… longer.
One doesn’t have to find themselves amid the throes of existential crisis to know that we are all seeking happiness here. A little more than we deserve, a little more than we’ll ever get. The pursuit is the same though; the methods, starkly different. Some of us are busy nibbling the crumbs of fame to taste happiness, some of us have achieved it in solitude. Some of us got lucky in the jackpot called privilege, some of us are fighting our way up even if it means trampling others’ dreams. Some of us are listening to what our heart says, some of us are giving our sweat, blood and urine (remember all those instances you prioritised your work over bladder?). So, all in all, we are pursuing happiness in our way, at our own pace.
What’s amazing about this ubiquitous characteristic is our utter blindness to what’s really going on. We call it happiness but when you scratch the surface and dig deeper into the mush that we indeed are, we’d realize that we are seeking love. Unadulterated love. The kind of love that made us happen years, or maybe ages, ago.
Think about it.
Since it’s immensely difficult to channel the love you seek through you, you try to beam it through your work or an object. You are temporary. Your work might be permanent. And the love (or hate) it attracts naturally distils into your psyche. Similarly, you don’t have to hungry to enjoy your favourite dish. There’s love involved in this bizarre equation. Your original pursuit doesn’t change in any manner. All the strangers you are yet to meet or crash into are already playing a tiny part in this unique circus.
The poets are to be blamed — partly at least, if not entirely — for putting love on the pedestal, making it an exclusive feature between two persons. When in truth, it can flow in all directions. Imagine the kind of world we’d have where each one of us could express more freely, the way we were supposed to. As of today, you can’t even smile at a stranger without a hint of suspicion in return. Everybody is gradually slipping into a cocoon of comfort. The amount of mistrust we have for each other is at a dangerously ridiculous level. The experts call it modernity. I call it our slow, painful decline.
As you can guess, the missing ingredient in our cauldron is love. In the rising age of social media, one can assume that hatred is the greatest uniting force. But that’s because its opponent is not even competing. Nothing unites like love. Even those we disagree with are merely a function of the things that they hold dearly. There is love involved in there as well.
Love is everywhere. If only we were blind enough to see it.