Beyond measure?

It has been discussed and philosophized over by most romantics, poets and what nots. Can love be measured? And if so, by what means?

It would be cool if we could use a measuring stick or a scale in order to know how much love we or someone else felt. "I love you 156 pounds." But what would be the purpose of such a measuring device? What would we do if we found out that we loved our partner more than he or she loved us? Do we have to love the other in equal amounts?

Me personally, I wouldn't see much use of such measuring devices or what do you say?

For me one quote sums up the more important aspect of defining love, be it between family members, friends, lovers or even pets;

Love is as love does

At the end of the day, it is that general feeling of what that love makes you feel like, and what it delivers in actions. This means there can be many types of love, but we decide what we can or want to live with.

A woman with an abusive husband who claims he loves her and finds herself believing in what he says can ask herself, "what does his love do to me?" Maybe she will change her mind.

Feelings & Toiletpaper

"Let me tell you something I have learnt in my 34 years on this earth. Feelings, like toiletpaper these days, are wasted. People use them up like toiletpaper, that is what they have become worth to others. Learn from me, feelings get used up. There is no endless source of feelings so be careful what you do with them, and who you give them to. You risk standing there one day, empty, because you gave and you gave without getting in return, and finally there was nothing left to give, and your heart died."

-Spoken by a friend

Lemongrass Update

In June I posted about Lemongrass (& Relationships). This is what it looks like now. A bit of TLC goes far for plants and humans alike.

Lemongrass & Relationships

I planted a few small lemongrass seeds last summer, and I was told I had to wait at least a year before they would bear any fruit. Patiently I waited and tended to my seeds, watering them through fall, winter and spring. Trying to understand what they needed, understand what made them grow, and what made them stagger.

During all this time, I had no guarantee from my lemongrass seeds that they would actually blossom, that they would, by the end of that year and all effort, present themselves to me in their glory. Hope is what watered them and patience is what nourished them.

Summer is here again and my seeds are now proud long stems of lemongrass with the sweetest citrus scent, and I tend to them with gratitude, for as I nurtured them into what they were destined for, I am now nurtured in return.

Gibran on "Love"

When love beckons to you, follow him
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you, believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

---

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks to yet another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

By: Kahlil Gibran
excerpt from The Prophet

Busairi on "Love"

"And love transforms pleasure into pain."

- Imam Busairi, Qasidah Burdah (The poem of the cloak)

On Love...

Why is it that man’s largest purpose in life it seems, is to have experienced love, even if it was entailed with loss?

The word’s of Khalil Gibran come to mind as he writes; “love is sufficient unto love”. Perhaps love is in the driver’s seat and we are merely passengers designated to ride in the back alone or perhaps in company? Regardless, it keeps on driving.

So much has been written about love, so many poems, songs and volumes all trying to capture its essence, purpose and mystery. Shakespeare wrote in his Sonnet 116; “It is not love that alters when it alteration finds, nor bends with the remover to remove”.

I ask myself; then what have we all been doing so far? I see love bending everyday. I witness love changing with circumstance, even disappearing. Such love that is idealized by Shakespeare seems fit only for the world of sonnets. He finishes by saying; “If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ nor no man ever loved”.

No doubt, "Romeo and Juliet" has been, is and always will be the ultimate epitome of a classical love story. The Arabs have “Qays wa Leila”, the Indian Subcontinent have “Leila Majnu”. It can only be fair to say such stories must have affected the way societies view love and perhaps idealized it into some sort of higher state of being that extends and lives way beyond our sense of time and space. Suddenly the idea of a hereafter is given a greater purpose; one to reunite loved ones.

In our world of “common sense” where love is nothing but “chemical reactions”, the flare and magnitude of such epic depictions such as the likes of "Romeo and Juliet" have become reduced to nothing more than a work of art preserved for posterity due to its historical importance rather than perhaps its inspirational. Whereas in other places like India, the story lives on everyday through the mass-producing Bollywood movie industry where forbidden love and dramatic circumstances where love lives beyond the realms of time all are common place.

One might wonder if the rationalized west is less romantic than the east. Or perhaps societies with a great belief in the hereafter or reincarnation depict love in many more dimensions than one? Dimensions that seem like hogwash to someone who doesn't believe in anything but the empirical and scientific.

Julia Roberts may have gotten the object of her affection in “Pretty Woman”, but nearly a decade later she was left without as she watched the love of her life marry someone else in “My best friend’s wedding”. What brought on this sudden twist of fate in the modern day Hollywood love genre? We always used to love watching our onscreen love heroes and heroines reunite. Or perhaps not.

Maybe the complexity of love doomed to fail strikes a cord of realism and ability to relate in our hearts, just like it always did. Maybe there’s a reason why “Casablanca” still remains among the top ten voted love stories of the past century, and people still sing “Love Hurts”.

It can be said, that no matter what opinion we should hold about what love is, an opinion we hold, nevertheless...