A Team is One: Summoning Solace
Summoning Solace
a monthly feature by Agampreet Kalra
A team is one.
Inevitably succumbing the pains from different kinds of relationships, I recently realised a few things I would like to say. I don’t know if you will agree or not, but here is what I feel. Firstly, I felt that our relationships are more about ownership than partnerships. It’s more about having to feel who has the upper hand and who is who in what. I don’t understand the idea of it, since love is all about seeing the other person in you. When there is love, there is no other person. There may be fights and titters but at the end of the day, it’s you two against the world. You two means a team, a team means one. But what happens when there are conflicts and civil wars in a team? The team falls apart— there are two fighting against each other in supposedly one team. It’s an intersected, broken team against the world. Which we know what outcome will bring.
When you think about love, what do you think about? When I was in junior middle school I thought love was all about kissing another person and walking hand-in-hand. As I grew up a bit, it became sharing your favourite treats and possessions and talking secrets. In high school, it swaggered around being possessive and keeping them all to myself and by senior high, it became more of a theory of a sham or non-existent. I studied in an all-girls-Convent school and my parents were utterly conservative about boys, so in whatever instance I got to meet with boys my age, I always enquired them if Men actually fall in love? If so, how? Is love actually real for both the sides? I thought that all the love us girls felt was kinda of a fuzzy frenzied feeling begotten by a reaction of mind when releasing a lot of happy hormones (dopamine). I thought this ghost of love will swagger off the head as soon as the mind is back to normal. And about men, I was too unknown to the species- to be specific.
As I grew up I reckoned love was actually real. But then we have mistaken different things as love. I asked a lot of people. What is love? What is love? Some said it was vehement addiction. I wanted to say we feel addicted to our phones too- but then again we want to stay away from it or get very suddenly bored of it when we see another model propping up. Some said it was doing anything (much emphasis on ‘anything’) for someone. Again I wanted to say, some people can do anything for alcohol or getting that wanted position in the office. Apparently I think they can love alcohol because they know it is wrong and want to low-key detach with it, and when one reaches that position- they want another one. Too often we mistake love for desire. Too often we mistake sex for love. Apparently a couple having sex is in so much love! I’m not saying sex and all those things are not important— they are equally important, but they are not love. At least not when we are not in love. Lastly, some others said it is like being able to leave everything for someone. In some part I agreed to it, but then again love does not ask you to leave everything and go along with them. It nourishes you enough to be independent.
Again, come back to the ownership and partnership thing. I thought a lot about it. I came to realise that as I thought before, about being possessive and keeping them all to myself theory. Why possessiveness? Do you think your significant other will run away if you don’t put a tag on them for being yours? They are not your dog to leash them around. Don’t you think you’re taking their space from them?
Anyways, possession also comes from the feeling of jealousy. But again why jealousy?
One thing I know for sure- Jealousy equals Insecurity. You only feel jealous when you’re nervous or insecure of your other half. And where does this mindblowing insecurity come from? Well, another thing I know- insecurity comes in when one is uncertain, uncertainties comes in when you don’t trust something. That’s the thing is, you don’t have faith in your partner which is leading to this jealousy organisation. And one cannot honestly love someone when they don’t trust them. Maybe you have fallen in love with the idea of falling in love with them. Maybe it is your adoration for their appearance with your misrepresentation as love. Because honestly if you had fell in love with their inner truer self, this question of insecurity could not be developed. You could see them with multiple people of their preferred sexual orientation, but you would never feel insecure. You could recognise them to be faithful to you always. If you had known them inside out, no pause of hesitation would have ever appeared, no matter what they do, wear, meet or talk about. You would have known them to be faithful to you. There will be no boundaries or binds. Everything will be free and calm.
That’s what true love makes you feel.
It does not make you text the whole day or provide you with a need to constantly put stories on your social media pages to tell the world you are in a relationship. It encourages you to work and excel in peace, encourages you to breathe in peace. It encourages you to grow and shine your starry glow across the sky.
True love, I think, is condition-less, unreasonable, satisfied, a calm feeling of being content in another. It is finding yourself in another and becoming one. Truthful love is never selfish, binding or disrespectful. If you cannot foretaste either of these for yourself, you partner can’t either. After all, you both, together, are one.
