I have been thinking lately of all the movies I have watched till date, in which the idea of ‘love at first sight’ has been glorified and shown off. The moment the guy sees the girl for the first time ever, he falls in love IMMEDIATELY as if he was waiting at the edge of the cliff to be pushed to the other side, starts singing the most romantic song and finally proves his eternal love to the girl and wins her!! The more I thought, the more I felt that it is nothing, but stupidity. Maybe I am wrong. But I feel it is very important that we analyze this age-old concept, or rather phenomenon, which has been glorified as the purest form of love by mankind. And since I am kind of jobless today and in the right mood for an analysis, I thought I would do it today. 😛

What exactly is ‘love at first sight?’ From the literal meaning of the words, it means X meets Y, and the very moment that happens, X falls in love with Y. Which brings me to my next question – what exactly is ‘love?’ I agree that love is a feeling. I have gotten immense number of cheesy forward SMSs describing the beauty of love owing to the fact that there is no real reason why a person falls in love with another. But is it an impulsive, spontaneous feeling that comes about in the spur of a moment? I definitely do not think so. No matter how much anyone argues about the divinity of blind and unconditional love, love is a calculated and measured feeling in a lot of ways. People argue that love is when you are okay with all the negative traits of the other person, when you are totally fine with the imperfections of the person and you are absolutely ready to accept the other person for who he/she is. But what makes you okay, fine and ready to accept the other person? Is that not the end result of a lot of evaluation that you conduct based on all the positives of the person and finally coming to a conclusion that all the negatives of the person are easily negated by the huge stack of positives you find?

Falling in love, for me, means falling in love with a person. And a person is nothing but the sum of his/her body, mind and soul. Soul, probably we can leave out for the time being, because that is yet another concept I am not that clear of and do not know how to define. A physical attraction that you have towards another person is something very natural. But just because you look at a person and get swept off your feet by the looks of the person, does that mean you are in love with the person? Absolutely not! If you say you are, then that is an insult to the word love. What if the person turns out to be a personification of whatever qualities (or lack of qualities rather) you dreaded all your life? Are you still going to call it pure and divine love and end up confusing yourself for the rest of your life?

Probably the problem is that we misuse and overuse the word love. Two days after meeting each other, a guy and a girl say “I love you.” Do they even know each other to say they do? We conveniently and unnecessarily substitute the feelings “attraction” and “infatuation” with an extreme feeling of “love,” which I feel is unfair. Because falling in love is not an impulse, it is a process – a long process. It is not just about meeting a person and feeling “Wow.” It is about knowing lots and lots about the other person. It is about understanding the silly, stupid yet endearing ways, which are unique to the other. It is about feeling totally comfortable in the presence of the other. And finally, it is about realizing that it does not matter what flaws they have, because their goodness is enough and more to make these flaws special as well. In short, love does not happen at first sight, or for that matter the second or third sight either. Sometimes, it happens even without a literal ‘sight.’ But it happens over a period, where two ordinary human beings learn to appreciate each other for the ordinary human beings that they are.

Also published on Medium.