Love! Ah! That four-letter word that makes the world go around; can you believe what this planet would be like without our love for it? We would surely have destroyed it a long time ago. More closer to our abode is the love of our country, for we go to war to protect its boundaries; we give our lives for the love of our religion (more people have died because of religion than any other cause in the history of mankind). We love our ethnicity and draw huge walls of discrimination against others; we love our language and we love our neighborhood and anyone outside from our own is personna nongrata. We love our home, our furniture, our trees, our clothes, and our pets and of course when it comes to human beings we love our spouses, our children (often spouses of others), our family. And above all we love ourselves.

So much love. Is man capable of exuding so much love? I believe not. Buddha had a brilliant theory. He believed that we are not capable of giving so much love and as a result we get love-struck. We bind ourselves because we believe we love people, things and values. A man toils throughout his life to provide for his loved ones and when he departs his loved ones often they could not be happier because he had run out any utility for them. Divorcing ourselves from loving is clear road to nirvana, says Buddha and I agree. If you love a piece of jewelry and you lose it you become sad; you may keep the jewelry till you die and never use and you do not become sad. So it is not the presence of jewelry it is the love of it that is causing happiness or sadness. If you did not love inanimate objects you wouldn’t be sad losing them. The same theory applies to emotions, values and prejudices.

Things get a bit more complicated when we speak of human love. Instinctually, we love our children no matter how ugly they are, no matter how inferior they are—they are our children. Unfortunately, it is often our love that destroys them, not the lack of it (though that is also often the case). Our love for close relations even brothers and sisters is a fallacy for there have been more murders between brothers than there is a need for. (Some people must be killed and sooner the better.). Children have shot their parents and vice versa also.

When we speak of love of the opposite sex, much more thought needs to be given. First, in the Grand Plan of the Procreator, we must love the opposite sex so we can procreate (what a deal He made—evolution through ejaculation). However, through evolution, somehow the genes of human beings got mutated and the love beyond the love of procreation began to emerge about 10,000 years ago. Men actually began to love women and some women even looked at men as if they were more than a machine of protection. However, the road the two sexes took to loving each other came from different directions and despite a mutual need they stand at a cross road looking at two different directions. A man in love with a woman would often be a suspect by a woman. Is he a "scalp-hunter," she would ask. A woman expressing love however will never be questioned by a man for her sincerity because she can offer much to express a guarantee of her love, a man can not. As a result, women have become greater teasers of MANKIND. The frustration they bring to men’s life, who are truly in love, is inordinate. Unfortunately, despite the heart-rending they do, men in love do stand by, forever—just hoping that someday.

Buddha was right that we must not love to reach nirvana but I wish he had been in love with a teasing woman.