Love’s dilemmas

Othello and Desdemona
Image from Wikipedia

Love is a complex thing though it ought to be the simplest being the most natural feeling between human beings.  Love makes the world go round.  Love is a feeling that wells up within us almost always.  We love our family members, friends, colleagues and a whole lot of people with whom we establish some sort of relationships. Yet it isn’t a very simple feeling.

Othello loved Desdemona arguably more than any man would love a woman. Yet he ended up killing her. He killed her for love. Can anyone kill the person whom he loves so much? Can we call that emotion love?

Desdemona was a pure woman who loved Othello as much as he loved her.  Her love was simple.  It was a childlike trust.  She was so innocent that she could not even prove that innocence.  Should love be so innocent, so trustful, so childlike? 

Did Othello really love Desdemona?  Or did he love himself more?  He killed her because he thought she had betrayed him.  Let us assume that she had indeed betrayed him.  Even then can a man who genuinely loves his wife kill her?  Othello had a lot of insecurities.  He had a good share of inferiority complex.  It is that complex, his insecurity feelings, that drive Othello to kill Desdemona.  He was saving his self-respect by killing her. So who did he love more: himself or Desdemona?

Genuine love is letting go if required.  If Desdemona did really have an extramarital affair, Othello should have proved that and asked her to move out of his life.  Let her go.  That is love.  However painful that decision may be.  Love brings pains.  Love calls for suffering.  Love cannot kill.

Love cannot possess the other person.  The other person is not an object to be kept under the lock and key of my love.  She is an individual with her own emotions and rights.  I have to respect those emotions and rights.  She has to respect mine too.  What is love without that mutual respect, without certain compromise?

The plain truth is that Desdemona could not have betrayed Othello.  Her love was so pure, so genuine.  It is Othello’s failure that he could not understand that love.  What is love without understanding?

The problem in any relationship is that we let our personal complexities mingle with the relationship unnecessarily, thus obscuring it.  Some such mingling is inevitable, no doubt.  What am I without my personal idiosyncrasies?  But it is my most sacred duty to prevent my relationships from being polluted by those idiosyncrasies.  There is always an opportunity for a dialogue with the other person.  Sit down and clarify messed up things.  A good conversation has saved many a relationship.

Couldn’t Othello have saved his love if he had sat down and had a hearty colloquy with Desdemona?  

PS. For #BlogchatterA2Z – today’s letter: L

Tomorrow: Meaning