I never loved anyone
until I married at the age of 35. Maggie taught me love with her agonised
endurance of my narcissistic whims and fancies. I was not aware of her agonies
until the bubble of my ego burst under certain pressures imposed on it brutally
by a few self-appointed benefactors. While I’m grateful to the benefactors for
their ruthless devotion to their task, I could never forget the fact that they
overdid it with more zeal than the medieval crusaders. Some scars left by
crusaders remain with you until your end.
The lessons are obvious enough,
however. One, love endures, agonises and transforms. As one of the first
Christian missionaries, Saint Paul, said, “Love bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things.” [1
Corinthians 13:7] Saint Paul was an ardent crusader too. But he knew that “Love
always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” He did not
say that love transforms. But it does. Maggie transformed me. Years later,
today, my love has transformative effects on some of my students, as they have
told me.
Lesson two is that
narcissists don’t love others. They love only themselves. Perhaps that is not
love at all. It is a less loathsome camouflage for self-hatred. The narcissist
is like the man on top of a cliff: everybody below looks small to him and he
looks small to everybody else. While listening to Prime Minister Modi, I have
often wondered whether he isn’t that man on top of a lonely cliff. But it is his
narcissism that drove him there; he elbowed out everyone on the way to reach
there – everyone including his wife. I have also wondered what would have
happened if he had started loving people somewhere on the way. India’s history
would have been significantly different. Only hate-mongers can idolise
narcissists and their tribe is increasing in contemporary India.
A corollary I learnt in
the process of learning to love was that most benefactors including
missionaries are not motivated by love. They have many other motives some of
which are not at all any nobler than the narcissist’s motives for his actions. That is why missionaries have not been able
to transform the world. They may speak in the language of angels, as Paul said,
but the world will continue to remain the same, if not become worse, because
they have no love in their hearts. They love their god[s] more than their
fellow creatures. They love their churches/temples/mosques and their holy cows.
They will kill for the sake of these perceived holy things. And killing can
never come from love. Never.
Another lesson I learnt
over time is that when you learn to love, most evils such as greed and jealousy
make an exit from your system slowly. Love makes you compassionate. It makes
you more understanding. You begin to see why others behave as they do. And you
begin to feel compassion for them. Not hatred. Not jealousy. Not the desire to
defeat them.
Love is a symphony. Quite
many instruments play in harmony. Love is the harmony.
PS. Inspired by Indispire Edition 241:
very nice sir.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear that.
Delete" Love makes you compassionate. It makes you more understanding."- You said it!
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteOne should learn lessons in the school of love. Really a difficult chapter of life. Your blog has a mystery of how you learnt to love. Because it is only explicitly stated. I want to learn what is love. Looking for your future blog on it. Thank you for this one.
ReplyDeleteCan I write much about love? I don't know. Love is an experience. I just wrote what I went through in the process of learning love or how I learnt some of the lessons of love. In the end, it's something to be experienced.
DeleteYou have prompted me to write another post on love, anyway. I'm going to write it. I don't know how much sense it will make nevertheless. I'm tentatively giving it the title 'How to keep pets and cleanliness'. :)
Very nice.
ReplyDelete😊
Delete