TO LOVE AND TO HURT

I have always wondered, if the magical charm that falling in love brings, happens to be the only thing that makes it so enduring and so fulfilling. More than often I have disagreed to this view and have always had this belief that the beauty of love isn’t just about the degree of selflessness that it involves, but also about the immense capacity it provides us over the lives of those we love. Loving takes us to position where we can hurt people infinitely and influence their lives greatly, and this contributes equally towards making this emotion magical.

But unlike the pain that we cause to a lot of people we don’t love, hurting someone we love is not sadistic. I’d call it masochistic because deep down we realize that by hurting our loved ones, we too are suffering. So, the measure of how much we love somebody isn’t just about how happy we can make that person feel, but also about how much we really suffer when we hurt that someone.

Why does this happen. Why do we quintessentially hurt our loved ones when we know we too will suffer in turn? Freud summarized it beautifully. According to him, along with pleasure, Pain also happens to be a human need. Pleasure in life can’t exist in vacuum. In our eternal pursuit to seek pleasure, we are subconsciously seeking some pain too. And this isn’t because we like pain, but because the presence of some pain in life determines the degree to which we seek pleasure. It acts a totem around which we base our happiness.

Falling in love is similar in characteristic. When in love, we surrender our lives to the ones we love and entrust them with an ability to hurt us. We surrender in faith, knowing that we’ll be hurt but we can’t help but surrender. I feel that, if we have a deep sense of love for someone, we will not only feel an immense bliss in making that person happy, but also an excruciating pain in hurting the same. Loving to just make someone happy isn’t a strong proposition for an eternal love. There’s nothing to cement the relationship once our desire to make that person happy, wanes. However, if we suffer terribly when we are hurting our loved one, we know we can’t run away because we are in an immense pain.

So, judge not how much you love somebody by how much you like to see that person smile, but by how much you suffer when you see that person in pain. That, in my view will foster a better bond for a truly magical love and the right enamel for a lasting relationship.

"असीम हो ये आसमान चाहे, छोटी सी मेरी ख्वाहिश मगर,
खुशियाँ तुझे इस जहाँ की सारी, न भी कभी दे सका अगर;
सोच बराबर अपनी, बस एक मोहब्बत तुझे दे सकूं,
गम तेरे जीवन के सारे, काश कभी मैं ले सकूं. "