In our part of the world, this phrase is so common: “Love is life”.
We watch public transport vans, taxis and cinema and theater corridor walls with stickers and wall chalking with the same words: love is life.
Yeah right ! We walk past those smilingly. How could it be ? Life is after all so much beyond this, we think.
So is it true and if yes, how can it be? Interestingly those who believe this are often found deeply rather madly in love with another human being and are willing to do any thing for him or her. For them the other person is every thing. Well then, they should say: love is my life but they do not have a reason to declare in absolute terms: love is life.
In a comment a reader asked me this, is love life? And for the very first time in my life I thought on the validity of this three word phrase.
Lets look at life: the symbol of life is growth. Yes some may say its movement, but many non-living things move as well, a dry leaf, a hanging bridge, a dehydrated bush in sands they all move, not to mention cars and buses.
Under a microscope the biggest symbol of life is growth again on a long term. A cell or a microbe under observation may move upon small vibration of the table, yet it would be considered as dead or crystallized untill it grows, either in number or in size.
Growth is a sign of life.
What is love ? It is our will to grow mentally and spiritually. Yet we find so many dead people working around us, doing chores, but they have lost all the will to grow. They do not want any thing to change or improve. Really wanting to improve is different than day dreaming. When you really want some thing, you are willing to pay the price. They want to improve things if they have to do nothing or if their current set patterns of work, routines, learning, behaviours, attitudes do not have to be changed.
We find dead people in relationships. They do not want to improve the quality of their relationships. They do not even want to think because thinking pushes them beyond their comfort zones or as a result of thinking they might find themselves at fault.
We find teachers and parents with an attitude of non-growth or resistance to growth. We find people seeking ease in life. Growth is difficult and thats why it does reward us in becoming better.
We find so many dead people just breathing with a state or an attitude of anti-life or an attitude of anti-love.
Love is growth. Life is growth. To love is to effort to grow.
To love is to live. Love thus is life !