In love?

You respect your partner? You don’t look at him/her the wrong way? You envision a dream where you and your partner are walking shoulder to shoulder? So you are in love? If yes, then read on. If no…what the heck, read on anyway so that you can talk about it to others.
Love is a sense of strong respect and good will towards a person. You can love your parents, siblings and friends, but since that perhaps is not what you would like to read here, we’ll discuss love for the special person you would want to share your life with.
To be in love, i.e. to want to share your life with someone whom you respect and wish the best for, is not bad. It’s not a sin. You have every right to like someone, to want to be with that special one till death do you apart. What is bad, what is sinning, is to hurt people, which is the opposite of love.
My definition of love does not involve dating and stuff. It involves a simple, innocent desire to belong. Being the hardcore realist that I have to be, I feel that dating will spoil your chances of being together in the future because in the Indian society, a guy who dates a girl is not considered to be moral and a girl who dates a guy is considered to be all the more immoral, and the impression of immorality is the last thing you would want to set before the eyes of your loved one’s family. It’s always more difficult for the girl, and it’s not just her whose reputation gets tainted, but it’s the entire family’s reputation that’s at stake. People would think twice before asking the hand of the other daughters of the family in marriage because we still live in a conservative society inspite of the global dynamism of our nation. Not too long ago I had witnessed a case where the mother of a boy had rejected his girlfriend, who by the way was from a respectable and affluent family, on the grounds that if the girl had dated her boy, that would mean she was immoral. This is just one case. Relationships being brought to a dead-end because of the notion of the families that if their kid was being dated by a person, then that person had to be immoral, can be found by the dozen.
So what do you do if you are in love? Simple. Work towards making your dream of sharing your life with the loved one into a reality. The best way of doing this is to understand your parents/guardians and his/her parents and guardians and take steps accordingly. Tell your parents that you would want to get married to the person. Convince them that the person whom you love, is good (i.e. suits your parent’s criteria of a good person), and that though you have not dated the person, from whatever you know of the person on a personal account and through others, you believe that you would be happy with him/her and that he/she would make a great family member. The guy must convince his family to go to the girl’s house and ask her hand in marriage, because the girl cannot do that, or at least is not supposed to do that in our culture. Expect the best, but be prepared or the worst. Their reaction may not be very supportive. You may have to pursue them. Do it, but not in all the cases.
You must understand that the diameter of your love’s consequences is not restricted to the both of you, but also encompasses two families, and sometimes two societies and two cultures. You must realize that you have to be a responsible member of the family, a responsible member of the society and a responsible person under the culture. If your love’s consequences are more negative than positive, then you might want to think twice before pursuing it. For example, if your love is bound to bud enmity among two families or two societies or two cultures, then you cannot put yourself before the world. The selfless responsible human being in you must be dominant over the selfish lover.
Throughout this article I have emphasized that love is about respecting your partner and wishing well for him/her. Be selfless in love. Do what you think is best for him/her. If you do this, then one can say that you truly are in love, and I don’t know about the others, but having done so you will have made a fan out of me. What are you waiting for? This might be the end of the article, but it is a beginning of your selfless love.