Love Talks

Love is a very subjective feeling, and can be described in millions of definition. I googled the word 'LOVE' and found numerous result of it. In Wikipedia, love is defined as an intense feeling of affection. From Wikianswer, I found quite interesting definition which might worth reading. Here I shared my favourite line quoted from the page.

"Love means that you trust the person, would do anything for the person, know that person is with you through thick and thin, isn't afraid to be seen with you."

Lately I noticed quite a number of 'status' posted in the Facebook Wall, mostly circled around the theme of 'Love'. Some has found new love, some has lost a love, some receive special blessing from the love, some finally tied the love.. and there's some waiting for new love, and some is waiting for impending love.

Someone has asked my opinion about love. The truth is, I am not someone knowledgeable about love at all. I can only share my bits of love stories, and hope they might somehow put a smile to someone out there.

When did I learn to love? Hmm, difficult question, yet still answerable. When you finally learn to accept and cherish one thing, you were assumed that you already learn to love. Simple example? Do you still remember the first present you receive for your special day? I did. I remember during my 7th birthday, I received a new fancy 'botol air' - bottle for drinks, from my beloved father. And there I experienced love to my father, and I was presented a beautiful home made birthday cake from my dearest mother, and I remember feeling proud and unexplainable happiness on that day. At that moment I know, I truly learnt to love my mother and my father, and expressed it by kissing them back.

How do you know that you are in love? To me, personally, when you couldn't get your mind off something or someone in a passionate way, you are indeed in love. But to know whether that is a true love or just a passing love, one might need to think again deeply. Someone might disagree on this, and I appreciate that opinion.

To love someone is a person's right to feel when and to whom, but I believe one has to have a set of principle before can truly practice true love. In this condition I mean 'the one'. Why did I say that? If one is allowed to have as many love as one's wish, there would be someone or more that could be treated wrongly. One might claim that he or she does practising true love to a group of people, and maybe have the difficulties to choose 'the one', but to me that's not healthy. In a way, that could invoke selfishness. Those who never made to be 'the one' would be suffered, as they could also have a chance to find their own 'the one' but stuck to this one special person.

When should one started to search for 'the one'? In Islam, when someone is already reaching puberty, and have the desire to get married, and have the ability and access to get settle down, that person should be allowed to do so, and should never be discouraged to do so. But when that someone don't have the ability and access to do so, they should contain the desire by fasting, and focus on strengthen their religious belief. What do 'the ability and access' means here? That means security in financial, healthy mind and body, able to provide foods, clothes and roof for the family, and have enough knowledge on how a marriage should be carried out. When one is not able to do so, that person should not be encouraged to get married as that person is not completely ready for the responsibility.

Perhaps some of us might say, 'We don't want to get married yet, that should not stop us from being in love'. I agree. But I believe, most of lovers dream of getting married and settled down. In our cultures, Malays, we agreed that marriage is important, and should be the main goal of a relationship. But every marriage comes with its responsibilities. One might say, once you're married, you have to let go the social life, the single life such as flirting, clubbing, etc. And I personally agree on this. People get married to settle down, and such actions are not acceptable once married. But hey, everyone has their own opinion, and I respect all that.

I am married to my once a best buddy, and now he's my greatest best friend ever and my perfect lover. He fathered my son, and now we expect another one coming next year. And for that I am my more than grateful. I'm not saying that our marriage is completely blissful, there were ups and downs, but I prefers to keep the stories to myself. It's not wise for a wife to open unnecessary stories to public, as we never know that the stories might be twisted in different way by someone we never know if we could trust. I am determine to keep our marriage strong as long as I could as long as I shall live, and I would do everything to keep us together, and I believe my husband is also feeling the same. I trust him, and I know he also trust me.

Again to the question, what is love? To me, its started from an honest friendship, and from there understanding grew, and trust built, and they started to look after each other in passionate way. They need each other for comfort and security. Each shows cares and in time they both agreed to tie the friendship into a much stronger relationship which finally settled with marriage. But I knew there are lots of relationship that didn't work, maybe one of them of both are not prepared to settle down. Or maybe one has found a better choice that really suit one's particular need. Or maybe it's simply that they were not meant to be with each other.

I was asked few question from my students before, regarding love. 'I love him, should I tell him?' 'She loves my friend, I wished she choose me'. 'He broke my heart, I hate him! I hate school! I don't want to see him again!' Ahh... I do understand the feeling, I was young once. That was the age when a child started to grow independent, and started experiencing a sudden need to be belonged and beloved. It's completely normal to fall in love in such a young age. But one never can be sure if the feeling they had is truly a true love, or just a need to satisfy the growing new passion in their life, the feeling to become a healthy adult. The love they had could be too young and immature to grow into a much serious relationship. So they need guidance, and here comes the importance of religious teaching, good parenting skills and good example from the community. It would be a shame if the new passion they experienced were guided in wrong direction, the love they thought was 'the one' turned out to be the disaster.

For those who are still looking for their 'the one', keep on searching. Sometimes we let our heart open too wide we couldn't really discovered which one is truly worth to stay. Sometimes in our tree of life, the person we thought to be 'the one' decided to leave, making us feeling vulnerable than ever, we almost forgot that there's still plenty of good branches around us. Sometimes we desire of certain difficult qualities that we missed the opportunity to actually know someone better who might be worth to be with.

This is my personal opinion and I wrote it in general mode, and to those who might not really agree with this writing, I'm totally respect the thought. I wish we could live in a much peaceful world, where love is truly a pure joy, and respected as it should.

Dearest husband, it will be our 4th anniversary soon, and I'm taking this opportunity to proudly announce 'I LOVE YOU AS ALWAYS..' I am more than thankful to have you in my life. I pray to God may our marriage getting stronger day by day.

'Dear God, may Dewi Manja and Shahril Nizam live happily together forever, amen.'

p/s ah.. pardon my English...