When giving feels like receiving

When love desires the return of love it is not love, it is commerce.

- By Prarthna Saran

By definition love only wants to give, because that feels like receiving.! The identification in love is so Complete that when the child has fever the mother looks sick, when Majnu was being lashed, then Laila's back became lacerated. Love lifts one to higher realms of joy and nurtures one's emotions to experience ecstatic joy and fulfilment in sacrifice.

All actions without love become a purchasable commodity turning those actions into labour and those emotions into beggary. When love asks "what do I get?" the enquirer descends from the poise and dignity of a human to the switched loyalty of a dog who runs after the one who throws him a bone.

A vivid example of selfless love is the mother, the housewife, the sustained and the solid support of the important 'grihastha ashram 'the family and the household'. It is the propelling force of love that inspires her to work from early morning to late at night tirelessly fulfilling every crying need of her family. The smile on her face while she is at it says all. There is no weekend for her. You find her physically tired but glowing with achievement! She totally identifies with and sees herself in her family, boundaries of I and you don't exist. The father equally slaves it out. As a provider, day after day he slogs to fulfil all their needs. This complete merger of identity with the beloved is the true measure of a love that elevates. When expanded beyond the family it engulfs in its loving embrace the society around, the needy, the suffering the impoverished, the unloved. True religion cannot be narrow and self-limiting, it has to convert all, yes convert to a love for all mankind, unselfish, unconditional. The one that always asks, "What more can I give?"

This was first published on 26 July 2020.