When Mariam, my three years old little girl is playing her childish games, with her pretty talks to her teddy bear and kitchen sets and imaginary peers on the phone, I often fail to resist the temptation to go straight up to her, lift her up and hug and cuddle her in my arms, and do everything that I think as ways of expressing my love for her. And then, everything comes to an end. Her game, her talks…a complete interruption of the flow of her enjoyment, all from my inability to enjoy the beauty of her talks and character unfolding in her games, from a distance!
Perhaps we do this very often. When we are too much in love with something or someone, we go rushing and grab it, to somehow possess it, to make it a part of our world plucking it from its own world, instead of taming us to watch it from the distance that we are, while allowing them the freedom and space to be in their world; it is a sunset of which the saffron colours we enjoy but cannot desire to own; it is a tide that has to be part of an ocean and can’t be carried in a tumbler…
Our innate urge to own – regardless of its intention, the craving to possess – whether to nurture or puncture, often interrupts the process….and therefore shatters in no time the joy of seeing the pleasure unfold.
Love, too, in its true sense is a feeling to be felt without interrupting its evolution and process, whether near or far, owned or not. The battle of feelings that sway its swords and spears in the middle of our chest from not being contented with the containment of the unexpressed emotions is understood, but that restlessness, that craving and yearning and longing for one more step to walk together, one more minute to sit together, is what sustains true love.
What is not expressed gives a hope and ambition to express, some-other-time….and the longing for that some-other-time to dawn is the beauty in the hope of that love.
I sometimes wonder if orgasm is a flaw in human design, for it terminates the hope for an eternal gracious moment, a wrong punctuation between an eternal bliss, stealing away the indescribable joy for the greed of wanting more; but in the same breath, I am aware too the naiveté’s of that suggestion, for how flawless is the design of God who designed the petals of a lily in the remotest corner of the valleys where human eye would hardly sight its beauty, as perfect as the petals of a lily in the middle of a palace garden!
Shahir
