By Emmanuel Ebimoh.
The path of love, what does it holds for us – pain, regrets, suffering, or joy? I’ve always wondered what lies between its path, what instinctive force that reduces a god to a common man and forges a sheep into a lion. All over history, we’ve been served with tales of how great and mighty men have fallen from the pleasure of love and walls that seemed insurmountable were brought down by a single taste of love’s poison. It is indeed distressing and it leaves a recurring question to one’s heart: what does love hold for us?
The myth of ‘true love’ has sailed through the stormy waters of history and plagued our minds into believing its supernatural potency to bring ‘lasting’ happiness to all who find it. Yet, only but a few that danced to its tune have been fortunate enough to experience the ‘happily ever after’. Others have either drowned in it to a sad end or wished they were resurrected to life again, away from its addictive clutch. The list is endless: from kings, warriors, men and women of worth; to the very teenager on the street, the struggle to search for and hold on to the burning flame of love has been the bane of many a life.
The concept of ‘being in love’ and sometimes doing things out of the ordinary is what really surprises me. I mean, how a sane mind, or maybe an ‘insane’ mind can take his or her life because the love he or she once had is no more rattles my imagination. Many have heard of Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy) – how both lovers supposedly died for the other, the undying love of Jack and Rose of the Titanic – where one had to lay his life for the other (well, some will argue that that’s justifiable), and many other questionable decisions that happen around us taken under the façade of love. These days, it probably takes nothing to ‘be in love’ and write one’s name on the hallmark of risk-taking lovers who can die for love.
Some have said that love is a beautiful thing, but I plead to disagree. If love IS entirely beautiful, then there shouldn’t be any tragic ending to it. If you ask me, I think love FEELS beautiful only when you’re in the arms of the right one. It could ruin a person if they lie in the wrong arms. So now the question is who is the right person, and is finding the right person a guarantee to a ‘happy ever after’ end?
I think love sometimes is simply overrated and perhaps should be handled with utmost caution. For if we continue exciting our senses with tales of rosy love fantasies, when/if it fails, we might not be fortunate enough to escape with our full sanity intact. And who knows what unimaginable act we might be guilty of committing.
