Love conquers (a lot, if not everything)
Recently, I read this really amusing, and rather sweet article.The article talked about when the author first met her future husband, she was suffering from a bad bout of the ‘flu. She looked terrible, and yet beautiful to him (or so he said!). Anyway, she goes on to talk about how she kept expecting him to turn off his “Nice Guy” attitude and break her heart, like all the other guys she dated. But that never happened. And they’re still happily married.
Don’t we all expect the worst to happen when we have something too good to be true with us? I feel fortunate, and I’ve written about this a lot, that I have found someone amazing in Jagadish. For the longest time, however, I expected the worst. We met in quite an unorthodox fashion, we barely spent any time being friends, but we somehow knew it was meant to be. I did not know how our future was going to play out. And to some extent, we still don’t.
The author also talks about how they, together, have built a life for themselves. And it’s not perfect, but, as Jagadish might say, who cares? Jagadish and I share a far from perfect relationship ourselves. We are two very different people, and yet very very much the same in so many ways. I think it’s stupid to expect that a relationship–any relationship–is going to be picture perfect, with no fights, and all fun. I think, like the old saying goes, that makes for a very rainy, dull day. It’s not to say that I enjoy our fights, but we do argue. Sometimes, when we think about it, it’s rather funny. We can’t remember why we argued or what started it all. Other times, it’s all too clear, and it ends up badly all over again. But when we do argue, I don’t usually ever feel like he hates me. He is actually incredibly mature (way more than me), calm and puts things in perspective. I expected that mask to drop off one day too, but to this day, he is still like that. He knows how to reveal his point of view, without being mean, and vicious.
Relationships are built with love. They are strong, and they are fragile at times. They don’t come easily, and when they do, they aren’t perfect. But when you can open up your heart and see beyond the fight and arguments that seem so important, and see how much better the world around you is because of that one person, it makes everything shrink in comparison.
Over the weekend, I watched ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’. As many of you who watched might remember, this guy falls in love with a girl whose family is very Greek. The father then forbids her from seeing the guy and tries to get her to meet all these other Greek men that he likes, and wants her to marry. Still, she sneaks out to meet the guy she loves. And this is a 29-30 year old woman! Well, when nothing works, the father breaks down. He is at a loss and talks with her mother–”Why is she doing this to me?” and “Is this what I raised her for?”, and the mother, trying to be gentle, and comforting even though she too is hurting, just says something along the lines of this: “They are in love. It happens sometimes. They did not mean for it to happen that way. What can we do?”And the girl too is torn. Torn between her parents and the one she loves. She tells him, “When I’m with you, I am so so happy. But when I’m with you, my parents are so unhappy.”
Sometimes that is the sort of understanding you want and you seek from parents. You look up to them all your life, wishing you could just be like them, knowing they are right the many times you were stubborn enough not to listen to them. And then there are other times like the ones I described above, when you in the very deepest part of your heart just know how you feel. How can you ever convey that across?
Love and beautiful relationships don’t come easy. Life is complicated enough, without bringing in additional burdens and chasms of religion, caste, creed, color, societal status, financial status, education level… where do these chasms end? This self-imposed divide has to be crossed at some point. Above all, we are all human, we are all creations of God, and we must never forget that.
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