Jim Carrey’s latest film, Mr Poppers Penguins has his adolescent daughter asking her father, “What do you do when you love someone and they don’t love you back?” The question became even more relevant when a few readers of this column wrote in and asked me the same question. The obvious answer that jumps into mind is many fish in the sea! You move on and preoccupy yourself with more important issues like work and life and come back to the drawing board when something more reciprocated finds its way into your life than belabour an equation is a non starter?
‘Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone — but not the complete structure.’ A philosophy that has always worked with me is that love is only one part that makes up life, work, workout, worship is my mantra to a magic life. Somehow Yash Chopra’s tinsel philosophy works for me, that nearly everyone has some special someone out there and you meet him and love ‘happens’ along the way. And even when it ‘happens’, you don’t make it your universe, but continue with other preoccupations too, like your profession, sport, reading, music , movies. Only then is it a healthy relationship and you a more interesting paramour to your partner. Not a doormat waiting to be walked all over on.
‘Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.’ Another side of the coin, is working at being noticed by the person who is the object of your admiration I suppose. Maybe the person just has not had the opportunity to learn of your special traits and has not had the opportunity to unravel what lies beneath.
A very ‘out there’ new age approach would be to go out there and tell it like it is. I have to admit I’m more old world and prefer subtle with regard to matters of the heart.
Ovid in his Remedia Amoris provides advice on unrequited love with solutions that advise travel, teetotalism, bucolic pursuits, and (ironically) avoidance of love poets, ‘Tennov has suggested that the only cure for unrequited love is to get indisputable evidence that the target of one’s love is not interested’.
The author is a lifestyle
columnist and a designer