Let Love Switch Places
We often find people longing for love that is as dreamy as a Bollywood movie, as inspiring as a #HumansOfNewYork featured love story and as perfect as a #Wedmegood post.
Haven’t we all read about real life stories that celebrate the power of love and reinstate our faith in happily ever-afters? A love story about a wife shaving her head to give her cancer survivor husband the feeling of not being alone in that fight? Or about a man choosing to hold an acid-attack survivor’s hand despite the girl’s ‘disfigured’ face? Or about an ordinary human falling in love with a differently abled person and embracing the ‘disability’ of his/her partner with love?
Such powerful stories about love always strike a chord with our hearts for they give us happiness, joy and hope. Somewhere we all start believing that true love looks as extra ordinary as these stories and may be only the chosen few are fortunate to experience such unconditional love in their lifetime.
While navigating through these thoughts and just when all this seemed like a blind spot, a sudden realisation dawned upon me. While these stories make us believe in the power of love, they also trigger a sense of longing for a love exactly like this. And that is when I realised that these stories make us happy because we read them from a receiver’s perspective. But what if we imagine ourselves at the other end? What if we visualise ourselves as givers and not receivers? Would we still wish for love stories like these? Would reading about them still make us happy? Would anyone of us imagine being that partner for a cancer survivor and still fall for them every single day? Would a man imagine falling in love with an acid attack survivor, let alone marrying her? Or may be falling in love with a differently abled person and carrying their so called imperfections as a badge of honor? The same love stories start appearing to be a little different this time. Don’t they? Do they still make us long for that kind of love? Well, that’s because most of us perceive love as something beautiful and satisfying only when we are at the receiving end. But unless there are givers, love can hardly seem beautiful. The stories that we love and the stories that stay with us are extraordinary because somebody chose to GIVE love rather than receive. Because somewhere somebody understood that extraordinary love is nothing but just some ordinary humans who decided to GIVE unconditional love to others. So here’s my takeaway from this beautiful revelation. Our personal stories might not have had that share of pain and struggle, they might not even require an unparalleled strength to love , they might not be as heart touching as the ones we come across on social media but they can still become extraordinary if we decide to GIVE love and look beyond those imperfections in our partners, parents, siblings, friends and people around us. After all, beautiful love stories happen because some of us decide to GIVE all the love away. And I guess, this little secret is the warp and woof of love and life.
There’s nothing more beautiful than a love that chooses to GIVE. The onus lies on us. This Valentine’s let us shift our ‘love gears’ in life from receiving to giving and see how magical and blissful the journey becomes.
#extraordinarylove
