Tuesday 17 September 2013

Love: The Irony

I am not writing from the perspective of a lovelorn teenage lass. Nor am i referring to romantic love...   not necessarily. Love. The word itself is potent, undeniably powerful for even the staunch advocates against its power are cognizant of the things it has done to us, the things it could potentially do to us.

I initially attempted bicycle riding when i was about six and being a child it was unsurprising that my initial reaction upon falling was to cry. I distinctly recall, however, that each time i fell my dad would stretch out his hand to pull me up and my mom would pull me into an assuaging hug, with whispers of "Don't cry, mommy loves, mommy loves." And there i would gather all the courage i could possibly have in my six year old self, take my dad's hand, and stand up again.

As the years transpire however, these words have faded into ambiguous obscurity, if not having vanished into complete oblivion. I have since learnt and become adept at riding the bicycle, and in copious other aspects i have matured. I have grown up, and must now be autarchical, self-sufficient... or that is what the vast majority appears to think of me. That is what society incites me to think, even of myself.

As we grow up, falling becomes an increasingly hackneyed occurrence and we are expected to pick ourselves up, without external aid. Not only are we scheduled to pick ourselves up, we are fostered and even championed to do so in the "ideal" way, of which definition portends doing so without any display of emotion, blatant or inconspicuous. We don't need love, for we are no longer little children incapable of managing our emotions. And it seems to me that love has become a labeled impediment, far more a vice than virtue.

I don't understand.

How am i to comprehend? Why is it that as each routinely 365 day passes that we are expected to be independent...independent of love even? Do we not remain inherently human...do not all humans need love for our very existences? If anything, we should need love more than ever before.

Society elevates independence, claiming emotional freedom immaculate, absolute. With flatulent confidence we assert that we do not need emotional encumbrance yet on social networking platforms we witness amongst ourselves the overt emptiness extant in our fallen selves, the need for company and the need for love, however meager the amount. I wonder why we are not more expressive...do we not realize the power the three words possess?

We are acutely perceptive that the eight letters that "i love you" constitutes could very well lift up a person's day, week, even month. Yet in all our complacency we do not actually do anything, witnessing the emptiness in people around us, in our very reflections. We may even be so bold to accredit our behavior to the fact that love does not in fact exist but in that exists the greatest irony of all... the fact that we have created an entire generation of emotional cripples --human shells devoid of emotion, void of the very core that comprises humanity.

Sometimes, i wonder if we have not all lost our minds.