Youth Incorporated Magazine

Khalil Gibran once had rightly said, “Life without love is like a garden where no flower blossoms”.

Indeed, love is such an eternal feeling that acts like an adhesive to unite two different souls, irrespective of the multiple differences, and keep them joined forever. Love isn’t about making only sacrifices or surrendering to the loved ones’ choices. Instead, it follows give and take philosophy. There is no place for anyone’s dominance, but both the partners who are in love go together and accept their shortcomings. The main thing that matters now-a-days and has proved its significance earlier also is that one needs to accept their differences and provide room to the other, so that there would be no question of freedom when the duo sharing a bonding find themselves in a difficult situation where one’s ego may come in front of the other’s.

But, nowadays, it can be easily seen and perceived that the usual and finest difference between liking and loving anyone is losing its significance. Love-birds, in most of the cases, mistake their liking as love for the person in consideration. They seem to have forgotten the basic difference between and definition of “to love” and “to like”. One likes a person because of his/her specific quality, a single attribute in which that person is good at and may be unique in his/her own style. But, when we love anyone it’s not about being inclined towards the person because of a single good thing, instead, it’s about loving the person as a whole along with accepting the differences, shortcomings and mistakes of the other. Moreover, the young generation – the bright future of the country, often find themselves entangled in the complex web of Physical attraction and Love. They fail to identify the slight difference between these two intertwined feelings, which at times become fatal to both – one who loves and the other who attracts. The truest and purest feeling, what love was known for, is losing its importance in one or the other way, and is being replaced by lust and attraction.

It’s the result of not only the lack of compassion and sense of belongingness in youth. The misuse and overuse of rapidly-growing technology and internet can see its role in this tragedy clearly. We have become so much dependent on social-networking sites that the real essence of verbal communication has lost its usual significance in between the Facebook messages, WhatsApp chat, and Hike and WeChat emoticons. We all have forgotten that the technological advancements are for our betterment, to make our life comfortable, and not to make “comfort” our disability. The developments in technology and internet have reduced the distance between the loved ones, but it has also increased the misconception, doubt and confusion about likeness, lust, attraction, and real love.

There is still time to amend the damages and prevent it from getting worse. This Valentine’s Day, take a pledge to include compassion and sensibility in your love to revive its usual form, and not to be confused between physical attraction and true love. Like all, Love a few, but make love with your special one only.