What is Love?

Looking for love in the folds of the past.

The last post I wrote here spoke about the family as a unit, or a social group. I believe that with each generation, certain advances and privileges come our way, making it not just our ability but more so, our responsibility to question things. I have dedicated the past few years specifically questioning and searching for answers starting with my own.

I grew up in a nuclear family where my parents weren’t particularly heavy on my caste’s culture or religion. Being isolated from these seemingly large things that define much of our systems and hence, our initial identities or labels, in my mind apart from biology and rituals, what tied people into a unit (or a team, as I called it) was the emotion of love.

Before you cringe or scoff, or get dreamy, I must give you this disclaimer — love as an emotion has been bastardised by pop culture a little too much. I know that and hence, will steer clear from all of it.

These are a few questions that I decidedly mulled over as I wondered why I loved those who I loved, whether in the past or present.

As with any psychological enquiry therefore, my mind wandered back into the nostalgic times of childhood, where love was supposed to have begun. It is believed that since one was born, one has been loved. After all, one’s mother gave a safe space for one to grow in for 9 months before tormenting her body to bring one out into the world. Dare I ask, is that enough?

As I questioned the unquestioned bastion of love that is the family, I wondered if everything was really safe and magical as I remembered it to be, or just the learnt emotion from what popular discourse on family and love seems to be or makes one desire it to be?

Don’t we all do this, at least for the initial few years of our lives–imagine that we had the perfect childhoods? Don’t we all push back trauma and sadness from that time, letting go of hurts and disappointments, learning somehow at such a tender age to look at the bigger picture of what our primary caregivers seemed to be?

When we do that, as seems to be the norm, what we are doing in essence is love everyone but, deny ourselves the kind of love we deep down desire. Of course, minor things and sorrows are always a given in any equation and just because a parent once refused to buy a toy doesn’t necessarily mean that one ought not to forget that. However, should one forget when one saw that the same parent brought a toy for one’s sibling, forgetting to get anything for one, only to be told later that a more special one was on its way? How is a child supposed to heal and develop healthy expressions of emotion, if all the child has learnt is to ignore, forgive and move on? When does the child express?

In my personal enquiry into family and familial love, it was interesting to question things all the more because I grew up in Rajasthan, the land where family implies a lot more than just love–pride, honour, business and so on. It was interesting to find the source of my not understanding some aspects of my friends’ lives because I did not have hordes of relatives defining a vacation or defining the next family gathering. I did not have too many relatives fussing over me and I also did not have too many rules defining my choice of clothes or toys. Hence, it was easier for me to assume back then that what brought my family together was love alone, thereby, making my narrative of family a singular one.

However, I am glad for my presumption because in a world full of ‘Indian parents memes’ the idea of using love as a way to get kids to do things, or be a certain way brings me to the point of this essay–what is this love that we talk about when we speak of family?

Thinking about this reminds me of popular Hindi cinema of course. When Karan Johar (a popular Indian filmmaker) came up with his film that said “family comes first”, it gripped the audiences in India because it resonated with an unsaid rule in the minds of most— you are first someone’s child / wife / daughter, before you are an individual, simply because you were given birth by one of them.

So, this brings me to the point of my enquiry–if there is, so to say, unconditional love between family members which requires devotion or loyalty as a return of the same, what purpose do the rules serve? Are they to protect the individual from being harmed in case the institution of family goes awry? Or are they to protect the institution in case the individual decides to call it quits? Can the individual even call it quits?

In between all the rules that we set upon what we call the family, is there space for one or two, or all that make up the unit of family to stray away from the duties of their designated roles, once in a while?

Related posts:

Beginning a career in the medical area is not easy but it can be done, especially if you work with the proper recruitment agency. It doesn’t matter if you want tips on hiring trends, the best…

AI-generated writing is taking over the internet by storm. How writers can fight back against the rise of the machines and their AI writing monoliths

President Donald Trump announced late Friday, July 31st, the Chinese app TikTok may be banned in the US within hours. Here's how to backup your videos.