Is Love a blessing or a curse?
Why do people die and kill for love? Why can a single feeling be woven by opposites, like happiness and misery, altruism and jealousy, peace and mental chaos? And how can such opposing forces be part of the same feeling, sometimes at the same time? Maybe, just maybe, because when it arrives, it is never announced and does not let you get ready for defense. Love is an invader. It attacks softly, comes disguised, almost unnoticed, and it is usually too late before you realize it invaded, like a virus, all your mental, spiritual and physical being. That is why it can become a blessing or a curse, depending on the side of love you dwell: the blissful joy of mutual love or the unbearable pain of betrayed, unrequited, jealous one.
I remember two true stories that made me realize you cannot control all your feelings, even if you are a sensible and reasonable person. Love is not reasonable. In fact reason and heart seem to be divorced entities when love is the main actor on stage. Albert was an intelligent, handsome Economics university student I once met. He could date any girl we wished, but he fell in love with Maria, a French girl who liked him, but did not really love him. Soon this unequal relationship became a nightmare for Albert when Maria tried to explain him she was not ready for a monogamous commitment. She wanted an open relationship. He wanted her for him and him alone. In the end, and after lots of ups and downs, he tried to commit suicide, cutting his wrists, eventually surviving but with a cripple soul. He was unable to love another woman for decades, absorbed by the memories of a painful, unfair love that broke his heart for good. Another story concerns Cristina, a happily married woman, a respectable and honest College teacher who fell in love with a student fourteen years younger. She knew it was a condemned love, it was by all possible standards a wrong, twisted love, but it was at the same time the most real, perfect connection she had ever been able to make with another human being. This powerful love came like a blessing – or a curse disguised in blessing – and changed all her perception of life. Only love can make you lose your posture, your well acquired social values, your perception of good and evil, right or wrong. A love like this can stand above morality itself, because trying to resist love is like trying to fight a tornado with your bare hands. The relationship lasted years, but with the unbearable seal of guilt, secrecy and shame that are the price to pay when betrayal is the price to be paid. In the end she told me it had been worth all the pain she endured when the relationship came to an end.
Both cases started with the blessed side of love, the one made of passion, a fulfilling sexual and spiritual drive that cannot be compare to anything ever felt or experienced. Both were eventually embraced by the darker, cursed side of love: pain and guilt, which coexist with the memories of the blessed side, but haunt your soul and deprive your life of peace. Curse or blessing? Both opposites may mingle and become a siamese reality made of extreme bliss or endless pain. As an unknown author once wrote: "To fall in love is awfully simple, to fall out of love is simply awful." This is probably the best conclusion you can take, as a witness, because you can only be certain when you drink, yourself, from the Grail of love
References
Quotes, Quotes, Quotes! – Love quotes – Retrieved : http://cwdaisy.tripod.com/quotes/id2.htmlfrom
