Devil's advocate: Love will make you Bankrupt

So let's talk about Love for a while. I have been "in Love" quite a few times. Some of them turned out to be short term flings, others proved to be a catastrophe. It has given some blessed times, and has also shown me how it feels to breakdown completely with no hope of recovery. I have fallen in Love, then fallen some more, until I hit rock bottom. Only to rise up and try all over again. And after years of in and out of all this, I have come to one conclusion "Love is a Business in Loss".  

I am going to be 100% honest here. I am not against Love (and by "Love" here I don't mean the Religious, Devotional or Parental kind. They are all great too, but here I talk about the Romantic Love mixed with Obsession with a tinge of Lust. The one that we the Aam Aadmis do.). In fact, it's important to fall in Love at least once in your life.

But then, it doesn't change the fact that you will always be in loss if you Love.  More often than not, it will push you to the verge of bankruptcy, may be not in monetary terms but in terms of physical, mental emotional, spiritual well being. Don't believe me? Of course you don't. I don't want to believe myself too. But then... Read on...

Let me first enumerate some of the Benefits of Love:

1. Love makes you strong : Love does make you strong. It gives the strength to do things that you never thought you were capable of. Love cannot accept you to be weak. You cannot accept yourself to be weak when you are in Love. You cannot give excuses anymore. You will have to get off your butt and DO things, even if you are scared to hell to do it. Because now if you don't, Love won't forgive you. But don't worry. Love gives the courage to face your scariest of demons. Have faith.

2. Love makes you care : Suddenly the health and spirit of another human becomes more important than your own. You cannot sleep, if they cannot sleep. You are obsessed about the happiness of another person. You think about ways to make them laugh, to entertain them, even if it means ridiculing yourself. It makes you less self-centric, deflates your ego, which is an absolutely fantastic side effect. If nothing else fall in Love for this. Become more caring humans. Give me a better society to live in.

3. Love makes you creative : This one is my favorite. Love makes you an artist! One day you wake up and find out you are a musician or a poet or a painter. You discover that you can write the most beautiful of love letters, the most charming of good morning messages. And if by chance you are the most pathetic "uncreative" person in the world, you haggle your friends to do it all for you.  You show your creativity in convincing them to do it for you. You pay them if that's what it takes.

4. Love brings a kind of freshness in the mundane : I hate the mundane. That's one of the reasons I keep on doing all kinds of "stupid" stuffs and experiments on self. Nobody likes to maintain the same routine of bath-work-internet-sleep everyday (with bath, work and sleep being optional). When you are in Love it breaks the pattern. It makes the day a little unpredictable. You do not want this day, this time, this moment to end. But, you also cannot wait for the next day to start, when the same time, same moment will return. 

5. Love helps forget the pain : We all have the pain points in our lives. We all have mental wounds (if you don't, do tell, I have been desperately looking for you). Broken relationships with family members, an expired loved one, a long lost friend, a big debt, failure after failure in career. Love (at least momentarily) makes you forget all that. Getting just a glimpse, hearing just an alphabet sends a strong shiver down the spine. It's kind of a non-sexual orgasm. Love is a drug of strongest of qualities, except that it's legal (in most countries, and regions). It's seductive and it's addictive. But anything that helps you feel more human should be welcomed, isn't it?

Won't it be wonderful if we could be in love 24 hours a day, 365 days an year, 70 years in a life span? Yeah Love is great, Love is awesome. Until, you start counting the Downsides of Love:

1. Love makes you weak : You tell me whom you love, and I will know where to hurt you. I do not care how strong you are physically and mentally, if I hurt the one you love you will feel pain. Because you are so protective of the person you love, you are virtually naked yourself. And here's what's worse than that. When you truly love, you give your psyche to another person. That's a scary thing to do. They now have the power to destroy your life, and turn you into a piece of meat over bones, who shits every day. You are screwed now. Unfortunately, you can't love without making yourself vulnerable first. I am sorry.

2. Love makes you delusional : Better phrase would be "Love makes you Stupid". You start doing things, that a sane person would never do. And if a friend or family tries to advise you, boom! they are gone! They aren't a friend or family anymore. It's like being under influence and not knowing what you are doing and the consequences you will have to face. Of course, love gives you the courage to do things, and but it also takes away the ability to think and judge if this is even the right thing to do. And when you come out of the trap of love, you start to see how much of an idiot you were. You start to hate yourself for doing all that. I told you, you are screwed.

3. Love disappoints : Love makes you expect things. Expectations always disappoint. Always. You send a message and wait and wait and wait for them to respond. But they don't. Or do it very late. You want to Facebook chat with them for hours. But they don't. Or do it very less.  You expect them to care the same way as you care for them.  But they have other important stuffs to do. You try calling them, try to plan a hangout, try to meet them after office hours. But they are too busy to do all that. You get the pattern, right?

4. Love changes you (sometimes for good, but mostly bad) : When you are in Love, it changes you as a person. I suspect down to the molecular level. And many times that change is permanent. Before the love came knocking down your door, you had your own aspirations, goals, dreams, plans, hobbies, passion. But once love enters your life, it affects every aspect of it. You need to modify your aspirations and dreams according to the convenience another person now. You need to ditch some of your goals, because they are incompatible with your goal to be in love forever. Here's the kicker: the aspirations of another person now start to take priority. You lose your own identity. I am not sure if that's a good thing.

5. Love distracts : This is my personal problem with Love. I am very particular about my productivity day-on-day. But love makes it impossible to be productive. You cannot focus. You cannot perform to the best of your abilities. Love diminishes your thinking capability. Love is all you can think of, while brushing, while excreting, while speaking, while eating, before going to bed, in your dreams and after you wake up. It start from being a part of your life, then it becomes the only part of your life.

6. Love asks for sacrifices : And sometimes your friends and family are part of these sacrifices. People can juggle between family and friends, or friends and friends. But I do not know any person who can maintain a balance between their "Love" and the others they love. We all have 24 hours in the day, most of us have finite resources (read money, energy, will power etc.). The more we spend these on one person, the less we are left for others. And you will be surprised, Love usually wins over family and friends.

7. Love gives you pain : When love hurts, it hurts badly. So badly that it makes it impossible to get out of bed and face the day. It makes it hard to even breath. You want to run away somewhere, but it won't help. The haunting memories would follow you everywhere you go. Every second, every moment, there will be tremendous pain. Sometimes you will hurt yourself physically to momentarily save yourself from the mental agony. What makes the matter worse is that it affects your near and dear ones too. They can't see you in this situation. Alas, there isn't a switch that could stop you from hurting. That could somehow instantly make you "normal" again. Somebody should invent that switch.

8. Love Kills : Time is the greatest of all healers. For most people, it gets better with time. Depending upon how much of yourself you gave into love, it takes weeks or months or sometimes years to heal. Scars will remain; momentarily you will break down once in a while. But bit-by-bit, you will make yourself whole again. Unfortunately, some people are not able to reach that point. The torture reaches to such an extent that taking their lives (and/or the one they loved) seems to be the only solution available. Love kills.

Now, I am a mathematics person. And anyone with elementary knowledge of integers would agree 5 - 8 = -3 is a wrong place to be in. You will lose in love. That's a fact. The faster you accept this, better for you. Love is the "One Ring" from The Lord of the Rings. One day, you will find it somewhere, get obsessed with it. But slowly it will turn you into Gollum. Call it "My Precious". Call it.

So what am I suggesting, should we not fall in love? Oh, I suspect if that's even in your hands to decide. My job here was to at least caution you of the perils of love. So that when eventually you do go fall in the ditch, you know the kind of shit that's coming your way. (But of course, whom am I kidding, you already know all this).

Contemplate on what I wrote for sometime. Till then, I will go find someone to love.