An Emotion I Much Rather Not Have

Love, that is.

A friend left, and on my own, I sat down by myself and watched 'Becoming Jane' tonight, which had still left me with a barrage of thoughts as I type this. The film has accomplished what it had set out to do; to evoke emotions and feelings, in this case, a sense of empathy towards one's unrequited love, as if you were living in the same moment with Jane Austen, sharing her emotions of wanting but not having. Like all good movies on the genre of love, it leaves one with a feeling of longing for something more.

I could still feel the raw emotion coursing through, that feeling of want, the need to be desired and be loved. Ironically, as with the irony the film featured, love is exactly the feeling if given a choice, something that I willingly forgo.

Reel life, unlike real life, compresses a lifetime into a span of mere hours that is made up of only dear tender moments, and the soothing, lulling message that leads us to believe that life is an everlasting bliss of joy and happiness. Even as we accept it not to be so, it doesn't preclude us from wishing, and even willing to believe possibly that at a given moment in time, when we look deeply into the endearing eyes of that perfect someone, which at that precise moment of sheer intensity, it will be of an eternity.

If it's hard to pause for a moment to not believe in the eternity of love, then it is even harder to contemplate on just how transient it is. But love is exactly just that: as much as food is constantly on the thoughts of a hungry man, a man starved of love is just as much be seeking to satisfy his emotional fulfilment. But it is from this derision of hunger that we lose sight of the fact that satiety that is the nemesis of all wants. It is when we get enough of something that makes it so much less desirable. The scrumptious meal is merely a palatable one to the full tummy; the pair of endearing eyes is much less so for the umpteenth time; and all that is exciting simply becomes the mundane.

Some say that love is what makes us human, but perhaps what makes us human is what makes us weak. If we are always aspiring to be reach our potential each day, then maybe we should be trying to surpass the weaknesses of ours, rather than to be merely succumbing to it?

But even if it is a weakness, I have no qualms if love was merely a tempered emotion. However, it is nothing like the tame beast that we all wish it to be; rather it is more like a raging wildfire that engulfs us, leaving us at the mercy of its whims and fancy. I would have certainly been less disagreeable about the notion of romantic love had it been of one that leaves us with some measure of control and self-dignity in tact.

If romantic love was to be more like the selfless love and compassion to the fellow man, it would have been one that I would have preferenced towards, for it is unlike the selfishness of personal desire that leaves no room for rationality, and one that transcends above language, culture or creed.

But as much as my own personal internal intellectual discourse will and want to rationalise that love is merely a barbaric relic that is passed down for generations for the purpose of continuing our progeny, I know there'll be no way of not be ceding control to this ever insatiable feeling to want and be wanted, to desire and be desired. But had it been a matter of rational choice, it will have been an emotion that I'd much rather not have wanted.