Ego and Love!

love is blind.

This is one of the stupidest statements I've ever heard.

If something makes you blind, you can’t call it ‘love,’ can you?

After looking at the title of this post, some of you might be thinking that love and ego are antonyms. I beg to differ. They go hand in hand. If one isn’t utterly selfish, he can’t love anybody truly and honestly. To be selfish, one must first have a ‘self.’ And having a true self is not easy. A selfish man is the one who isn’t concerned with others in any primary matter. His wishes, desires and dreams aren’t guided by others. He doesn’t need the approval of others. He doesn’t need the assurance of others that he is good, that his work is good. He lives for himself. He loves himself. He respects himself. This is why I say that only an utter egotist can love somebody honestly. If a person cannot respect himself, he can neither love nor respect others. So there is nothing called selfless love. And anything which is selfless is rotten, let alone love.

I often hear things like, “I can do ANYTHING for my girl,” “I have given my heart and soul to my boy,” etc. But giving one’s soul is the easiest thing in the world. Keeping it with oneself is difficult.

Let me narrate you an incident that took place some months ago. I was sitting in a coffee shop, waiting for my friend. A few tables away from me, a boy of my age was sitting, reading a book. Some time later, a drop dead crazy gorgeous girl walked into the coffee shop and to my envy she went and sat in front of the reading boy. Well, the boy said ‘hi,’ in a nonchalant way, and she apologized for coming late. The boy said it wasn’t a problem since he had his book for the company. Then our heroine got angry all of a sudden and said to him that she deliberately came late in order to know whether he was worried about her or not. She then mouthed some imprecations and walked out of the coffee shop furiously. And I was not jealous anymore, not because she walked out on the boy, but because I was happy for not having a person like her in my life. Let beauty be damned, I don’t want a bimbo for a lover.

This is what we get to see everywhere. The girl wears her boyfriend as her badge and the boy keeps his girlfriend as his champion’s trophy. And they call it love. True romantic love is only possible to people of unimpeachable self esteem. Now where was the girl’s self esteem in the above example?

One of the biggest fallacies is that love is a matter of heart and not the mind.

Let me tell you something: love is related to mind, and not heart in any way. It is NOT independent of reason and one cannot love anyone without being rational; it is a subject of values and only a rationally selfish man with the highest self esteem is capable of love, because it is only he who can hold his convictions and values firmly. If he cannot value himself, he cannot value others, and eventually cannot love anybody. Such is the nature of love. It is thus an expression of your highest values, and the greatest gift you receive for your chosen actions, your character of the highest kind, for the joy he/she receives from you through your virtues. It is definitely not blind, because it sees a lot.

Love is devoid of any pity or sympathy, contempt, self-sacrifice and compromise. These things never exist between people who are equal, and love can only exist between equals.

In love, there can only be reverence and glory.

A woman, in spite of being brilliant, leaves her job to take care of her family. Now this is not a compromise in any way, because her family comes above everything else. Her first priority is her family and not her job. She is doing it for her own happiness and for the love of her husband and children. She is utterly selfish and completely virtuous. On the contrary, if she places her job above her family and still gives it up, then it would be a compromise. And it is definitely not virtuous. It’s like saying, ‘Schedule your priorities. Don’t prioritize your schedules.’

If a man’s wife is suffering from a deadly disease and he spends all his money for her treatment and also leaves his job to take care of her at home, it is again not a compromise. He does it because he is an egotist. He can’t be happy if something happens to his wife. His wife comes above everything else. He does it for himself. He does it for his love for her.

Now, let me tell you what a compromise is.

A boy wants to go on a trip with his friends and have some fun. But his girlfriend doesn’t want him to go, because she wants him to be with her. He is cognizant of the fact that she is not sick, or depressed in anyway, but simply wants him to be with her. He succumbs and stays with her. He is unhappy for missing the trip, but he doesn’t show it. He doesn’t want her to know that he is unhappy, and he does it under the pretense of his so-called love for her. And this is called a compromise, which is certainly not virtuous. Compromise is a negative term, and not positive. What the boy did for his girlfriend is not love, but rotten dick-headedness. Anyone who compromises is a brute.

When a boy asks his girlfriend to change, say, a particular personality trait, her dressing style, her hair style, her friend circle, or anything else, she does it blindly, without a process of thinking. She thinks that giving up something (something that defines her identity) for him is 'love.' But only she doesn't know that it is not love, but slavery.

The biggest crime in the world, folks, is not murder, or extortion, or fraud, or rape, but having self-pity. All the other crimes I mentioned start from this single crime itself.

When a relationship ends in an awful way, some get into a state of melancholy and it is quite normal. They share it with their close ones, not to gain sympathy, but they just want to get it out of their systems. They never make any fuss about it, but deal it with dignity.

There are others who belong to another category: they start pitying themselves and start advertising their misfortunes, everywhere, with everyone (even with total strangers). They expect others to say that they are good and their exes are scumbags. They need ASSURANCE from OTHERS that everything is going to be all right. Their self esteem is breached, they start enjoying the attention they are getting from their sympathizers, and eventually they start enjoying that pain. Technically speaking, they become masochists. And masochism is a disease.

It’s people like these who are incapable of loving anyone, people without self esteem, people without integrity. These are the kind of people that always need others to guide their actions; their lives depend on others’ judgments. They never ask, ‘Am I correct?’ but all they ask is, ‘Am I correct in others’ eyes?’ Others’ opinions about them and their work matter a lot to them than their own. I agree sometimes some relationships do not work, and it causes some pain. But pain is not the reason to suspend the faculty of independent judgment. Pitying oneself is not going to get one anywhere. When a man starts having self-pity, he starts destroying himself. And how can a self-destructing man love anyone?

Now you understand why one needs to have an ego in order to have the capability of loving. Anything done for personal happiness is good (provided it doesn’t cause any disturbance, pain or embarrassment to others) and anything done to please others, no matter who they are, is despicable. It is slavery.

When I see a man looking at the sky, enjoying the cosmic beauty, with his head thrown back, it is the sight of the uplift of his head that fascinates me more than all that heavenly glory. But I get sick of that same uplift of head when I see him kneeling down in front of a girl, beseeching to accept his love. Love? Sorry, wrong usage of the word here.

So where does true love come from?

It can only come from a self-sufficient ego.

Now I would like to ask a question to all those Lailas and Majnoos who say, ‘I can do ANYTHING for my boy/girl’: Where is your ‘I’

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I humbly wish you all have lovers, and not girlfriends/boyfriends. Hope you get my drift

P.S. Having said the things I firmly believe in, I might still write funny stories where boys behave in a silly way in front of girls. But that would just be for pure fun and entertainment.