Alena Shakya

Kathmandu:

I want to know the meaning of love and have been racking my brains for weeks on the most dramatised and trivialised subject. Ok, let’s face it: love is an intimidating subject that has been done and overdone to the point of mass delusion about what it is and isn’t. The chance to love and be loved exists no matter where you are like the well-known song “love is all around”. But most of us can’t see it because we have our own preconceived ideas about what it is i.e. it is supposed to knock you of your feet and make you swoon and how it should appear in a tall, slim, witty, charming package. So if love doesn’t come wrapped in our personal fantasy, we fail to recognise it. Love is and exists in all forms. When I enter my home my dog comes to greet me with much excitement and for sure it is love. I know love is always available for the asking. I have seen so many women dazed by the idea of romance, believing they are not complete unless they find someone to make their lives whole. Isn’t that a crazy notion? You, alone, make a whole person. And yet if you feel incomplete, you alone must fill with love all those empty spaces.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself”. I have witnessed people want to be rescued from their daily lives and swept in romantic bliss, when all around there are children, neighbours, friends and strangers also yearning for someone to know they matter. Look around and notice-possibilities are everywhere. Recently, I met a girl from Bangalore, working as a sub-editor with her family far away. I started blabbing my stuff and she was giving some okay and oh once in a while. Then all of a sudden, she said with desperation, “Alena, I feel so abandoned, show me some love.” What was I doing all the while that was a form of love I was giving a stranger. But some individuals find it hard to open up and feel the love around. If you find it a strain to open your heart full throttle to the Big L, start in first gear: use compassion for a while and feel yourself shifting to something deeper. Before you know it, you will be able to be a blessing of understanding, empathy, caring and love. The chakra of love never ends and does not have a final chapter because the legacy continues. It is like a person lending you a candle to light and you pass it on to another and so on.