Love or Devotion?

Important: Take it easy

There has been so much known in this world about love that one or two experiences or comments from a novice like me wouldn't even make sense. With my generation it has already been such a common phenomena that I wonder if its the same which people did a generation or two ago. It reminds me of an old song

"aapki nazron ne samjha, Pyaar ke kaabil Mujhe
Dil ki ae Dhadkan thahar ja Mil gayi Manzil mujhe"

Where are those bondings? Look around anywhere, so many people just trying to satisfy their personal egos on this front, which makes people like me little stubborn about getting into any such relationships & hence I've always forced myself not to give enough space to myself to find entangled in this web anymore.

But a human is after all human, how long can you fight with the laws of nature? There are times you also meet a person who looks to be so nice & comfortable that your hormonal structure is forced to get imbalanced. You actually feel like doing everything w.r.t. that person as if you would have done for the one just like as if you loved him/her, doesn't matter how stubborn or stern you are to this feeling.

Since we do not know or usually do not even try to know whether the feeling is exactly the love or something that looks very much similar to it but not love. Indian culture especially is so much obsessed with this feeling that we do not even bother to find if theres something that can exist beyond this brand called 'love', we therefore end up calling every damn emotional feeling as love, treating it as love and believing it as love and when this thread demands a permanent relationship it doesn't work out for most of us. And very easily then we end up saying that 'Love marriages aren't successful'!

It therefore, becomes immensely important for us to find out if this feeling is really the love or something which looks very similar to it but actually not love. But the whole big issue here is: Are we really mature enough to make judgments in the matters of love? And in case we are, what are the parameters against which we should evaluate the sensation of these emotional feelings?

I somehow discovered something of this sort very recently, yes I too liked a girl with no strings attached. After spending a considerable amount of time together, very much like a normal guy, weighing my principles on one side and the emotional turbulences on to the other, I realized that there's something that holds me close to this girl and it was then when I urged to find the real meaning of the strong affection I had developed. Was that love or a replica in course?

To ease out the comparison between the love and a replica of it, lets term it as devotion (funny part is that till date Wikipedia doesn't have any definition for this word & in Hindu mythology its just a synonymous for Bhakti, which am sure is little away from the sense I mean to use it for), for the simple reason that it sounds quite nice & decent, also this is the best word my vocab suggests me (it could be anything else, as long as the essence remains same). But then the boundary between this love & devotion is very mean. On top of that, with the culture & ambiance we live in today, it becomes even difficult to identify & justify whether do you love a person or just feel like devoted to.

How can one find if it is love or devotion?
Now defining love would mean like showing light to the other end of an infinite tunnel with a candle in hand. Let me try a bit with my small candle source itself (I have to, since the subject has already gained the momentum).
* Somehow I feel in love you feel like getting as close to each other as possible, applies to getting physically closer as well.
* You feel like participating in every possible chores of the person you find hooked to, within or out of reach, doesn't matter.
* You also feel like consulting & getting consulted for every damn small thing in life which wouldn't mean/ matter anything to anybody else besides both of you.
* At the end of the day, all you want is the company of the person that you believe you love.
* To express & getting expressed about yourself in due course of time from each other is something inevitable.
And several things like that which am sure wouldn't need any mean explanation from my side.

Devotion I felt comes, when the source of attachment is something very sharp & focussed (very much away from the dynamics of love in its fundamentals, couldn't be termed on the basis of parameters like beauty, smile, closeness etc. etc.). This source could be as simple as some sort of sympathy towards that person for just one very very small reason, which wouldn't even find a ground to stand if talked about it to someone even by chance.

And when you feel like devoted all that matters is that person's agony & presence to you. It also doesn't matter if that person really appreciates you/ your devotion at all or not. You believe in doing some sort of Karma & feel like hooked to even if he/ she remains or tries to detach from you or for that matter remains involved with somebody else.

I believe its just a language of admiration which doesn't need any appreciations but attention and not even attention many a times. Importantly, like love it also doesn't end even if the bond weakens but unlike love it usually doesn't makes you negative about the person even with worst of the understandings. Here too a feeling that could hurt most of the times is the ignorance from the person. Here too expectations, fear & disappointment makes a very much an cyclic part of the relationship that you share, which is potentially stronger enough to bring your energy levels down to the minimum that you can ever expect.

And all this has definitely taught me something vital but thats my understanding of the things, everyone has to go through this process to be able to derive out this learning ... But I know even if I say all this, it will still repeat, I'll still admire people, I'll still long for closeness, I'll still find sympathetic and may be devoted again, an irony indeed!

I also know whatever remains the matter of the subject, it can never be perfect, can never be sufficient & can never be absolute but still ...