The phrase has found permanent abode in my mind:
Africa, the place where we first became human!
Today I want to borrow the strength and thrust of that epigram to talk about one topic whose essence has escaped even those once thought to be the wisest of men.
Love, the master of mimicry!
Quite close wouldn't you say? Well, Love has been mentioned in poetry, sonnets, and many a song. When it blossoms between two people, it is the most powerful force known to hue-man. Wonderful stories have been written about ancient lovers who were magnetized and bound together by love. And upon reading those stories, they conjure in our minds images of blissful experiences, the form and texture of which no special words exist for its ultimate definition. Many have tried to describe it, define it, and even deconstruct it to make it easy for those who find thinking to be quite a chore.
Still confusing. If not to you then see how much sense you can make out of the following.
There are as many ways to do the love thing as there are lovers.There is no known way of describing a feeling in succinct terms because everyone feels it in a very personal way. I mean, there is no school where love is a discipline or at the very least an outline in the curriculum of a known course of study. Or we would have seen eggheads of both men and women being protected from the scotching sun by crooked motor-boards fitting the accolade - Dr. Love fimo fimo. But there are none. The sad part is there may never be any person qualified to be an authority in matters of the heart. No man of any importance who came before me or will ever come on my hills should ever claim to know more about love than another. Doubt my words at your peril
In this piece I make my first attempt at helping us understand what love should not be.
Love is the master of mimicry. Love is not finite. Therefore, it fits any configuration of the kind of hearts in which it is assigned residence. For instance, it fits in your heart following the exact form of your heart. Your heart being the white-water environment of constantly changing tastes and preferences, highs and lows of tolerance, with no fixed frame of reference but that which is presented by the day - whatever that may be.
Love is the master of mimicry!
So then, what is love to one, and the determinants of it, is a totally different animal from that of another. I said doubt my words at your own peril. Because if what I have just said were not true, people would be able to connect in the plainness of love and remain stuck like glue for at least a century. One's desire and honest effort to learning to experience the same intensity of love and appreciation that the other puts one in a customized and personalized university . And when they sit to learn, word should be unambiguous, there should be no double meaning, and perceptions should not be of mirages but impartial feelings, solid enough for one to rely on.
Those who truly loved would not let, not for a single second, allow the once green garden of love turn into a desert full of rolling balls of dry rootless shrubs. For such situation prevail only when hopes, and perceptions are diametrically opposed to reality. This is how it is with everything else in life, though. Nothing is borne exactly in the manner it is initially conceived. Because life, as is known to mortals, is a constantly changing white-water environment.
In love as in life, the success of a relationship is not enough. Happiness is everything.
So then, again, because the environment is constantly changing, the success of a relationship between two people is predicated on each person's skill to train the other to understand the terms of happiness. Each of them should ask, what about me presents happiness to the other, is it the person of me or is it what I can do? Evidently, the questioner would not know until he or she is told. This is one instance where assumption becomes a root killer. Meaning, what one person does should not be misconstrued as an act whose intention is to deceive, dupe or disappoint. In the Zambian lingo ati amasetting. All efforts must be made to avoid entertaining the idea that the other lacks discernment as regards the partner's expectations. Nothing should be left to imagination. If you can do the heavy lifting, teaching the other person how to love you must be a weightless dumbbell.
That interaction between two people, who are predisposed to processing information in a wide a array of ways, it must be understood, and who's rate of response to the changing outer environment, and indeed their own, creates another being which must be fed well by both parties. Times and areas of congruency are few and far between. Love is separate and independent being from the two people involved. The health of this love-being depends on how well both parties understand its proper nutrition.
It's alive!
The form and shape of this new being is like the hearts of the two people involved tied together. It is uninsulated. It can potentially wilt, weather, atrophy, and die when it is forced to serve the interest of just one instead of both. However, it can be revived by improved communication. It's health improves when expectations are openly discussed and not assumed. Consequently, it bears happiness when what is discussed is taken seriously no matter how jokingly presented.
Let me see if I can outdo myself here. I want to distill all I have said above into one short paragraph. Here goes:
Love is only defined by the circumstances two people find themselves in. How it grows from that point forward is not dependent on what other people say or think, but what is communicated between the two. They can choose to communicate honestly and allow love to blossom and bear happiness, or they can assume things and obliterate all possibilities. I don't want to downgrade the importance of love by simply saying, it is communication. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Communication is quite essential and comes in many shapes, among them is what is said and how it is said, too. The most important question one should ask to get to the bone of love is, How do I feel when I am with him or her? The varying array and granularity of the response(s) to this question would discharge love from the ICU or condemn it to death. Oh, yeah, Love is mortal. It can die too.
That is why when communicating,
it is important to take time to
say what you
feel.
I end this note by saying, the more there should be to love depends on what is cast on and shared from the canvass of honesty. Illusions of romantic poetry and melodious sonnets are a luxury of aristocrats.
Lest I be misunderstood; I am not trying to be a love guru but a student of it.
And I take a little bow.
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