So for the last week or so, I have been listening to words like “long term objectives” and “sustainability” and “balancing stakeholder interests” and all that sort of thing.
Yesterday, I was listening to a friend who broke up with his girlfriend of over a year.
The thoughts seem disconnected at first. But they’re not so different. And not all can be sustainable and many are doomed from the start. We’re either too blind to see it or too wishful to accept it.
Love overcomes all obstacles they say. That’s nonsense. Love doesn’t overcome anything. It’s people in love who do. People who are still the same they were before they fell in love. People with their own strengths, limitations, idiosyncracies and eccentricities. The same habits and the same blinkers. All love does is to make them question themselves and the way they are sometimes.
How much would you change for someone you love? I think it’s an answer that we already have, somewhere deep inside. Do you really want to be with this person forever? We know the answer to that too. It’s a single word answer. Yes or no. And if you know that you’re not willing to make the kind of sacrifices being together entails and if you know that you don’t want to be this person forever, there is an end in sight.
The first love is probably the most reckless of all. We’re ready to do whatever it takes, move mountains, fight with family and we just cannot accept the possibility of anything less than forever. But as time passes by, we realize that we can be attracted to many people. Some of it is love, some is not. Sometimes you know it’s a passing fancy. Sometimes you know that its not really going to last but you still want to explore the possibility anyway.
Who is to say that a relationship that last only a few days or weeks or a couple of years is any less meaningful than one that lasts a lifetime?
Questions that have been in my mind for a while now. And a thought that is vaguely unsettling. If you know that a relationship is not really going to last too long, does the whole balance shift? Does prolonging things beyond their logical end cause more pain than ending them? And worse, does the frustration of something good ending prompt people to behave worse than they would have otherwise?
I don’t like judging the motives of the girl I don’t even know. And I really can’t bring myself to tell him that he was right and she was wrong. I can tell him what she did at the end was wrong. But just barely. I feel sad for him. And I feel sad for her too. I really can’t believe that at the end of almost two years of liking someone you could be nasty to them and live with it. I just don’t want to.
It’s hard to believe that a relationship has ended. Brought up as we are on stories of “Happily Ever After” and love that spans lifetimes. It’s hard for us to believe that we’ve not failed when a relationship comes to an end. And it’s hard when you as a bystander see what’s coming and have to be there when it finally comes and not say “I told you”. Yes I knew this was coming. But does it really matter? That’s not the point at all…
At the end of it all, I am left with disturbing questions that I conveniently locked in a corner of my mind.
We talk, we debate, we philosophize for a long time. Then out of the blue he says, “Good Night Angel”. And I know all is well… It just takes time…
