Sunday, February 15, 2009

THE DOMESTICATING LOVE


It is a pitiful sight when an open-minded, brainy girl is being bogged down into the humble service of domestic realms. To see her wake up even before the sun peeped in the east only to cook breakfast for the beloved. To witness her let her wings be clipped and her roaming space at the mercy of the beloved. To find her succumbing to every word he said. To see how he is slowly becoming the axis of her universe. And to see her struggle to ignore how infinitesimal her universe has now become.

What to say when you see all that? Don’t you just wish you could grab the girl and shake her and tell her to end this folly? But then you’ll see her eyes brimming with tears of joy; she is deliriously, foolishly happy to the point of numbness of the senses.

Perhaps love is meant to overcome your reasons and make you look like a complete idiot. Perhaps you should just let it be. But I don’t think love should be domesticating. Domestication underlies the notion that you live not to be your own master, but to be someone else’s “slave”. Domestication demands your every effort neither for your fancy nor betterment, but to please the “master”. It is an insult to human dignity, in a way. Being in love or not, I don’t think the brain should be let in a deadened state as to tolerate such domestication.

Does love bring you face to face with your primordial instincts? When in love, can’t women resist the temptation to SERVE? Can’t men resist the temptation to RULE? It is a pitiful sight indeed, yet if you would just look around you would see so many women succumb to domesticating loves and embrace their shrinking potentials quite welcomingly and happily. Letting go of their dreams, walking away from the promising future so casually, only to be at home and do HIS laundry. I am sorry to say that this happens to women only.

I am not a feminism freak who would accuse every housewife of gender blasphemy. But I believe love is supposed to be expanding your universe, to be lifting you spiritually, to be blissfully beautiful. Yet domesticating love is not blissfully beautiful. It can’t be love. It just can’t.

WHAT LOVE IS AND WHAT LOVE IS NOT

Love is overrated.

Too many people talk about it, moan about it (both quietly & noisily), write songs about it, sing & dance for it, cry, swear, be full of passion and be made foolish because of it. Yet too few people truly understand what love is.

I myself don’t understand what love is.

But thru my recent travels to Texas, Bali & Yogyakarta, thru my quiet time of pondering & wondering, I think I am justified to say that I have come a step closer to grasping what love is NOT. I’ll share my thoughts in upcoming posts.