I learnt a few things today.
I learnt that for women, different guys are allowed to care for her up to different levels. This level of care depends on how close she feels to him, or how close she wants him to be. There is a line you aren’t supposed to cross. She doesn’t WANT you to care for her beyond that line.
If you cross that line, it makes a woman uncomfortable being around you. And once you cross that line, there’s no such thing as turning back, or pretending it never happened. You can’t just walk up to them again and say you don’t care that much anymore and expect everything to return to normal. Like it or not, she will always keep you at arm’s length from then on…… because…… well, you care more than what you were supposed to.
It’s funny actually. I always believed that a person could always choose to show love for another in a way he / she deemed fit; that every person was free to care for one another in whatever proportions their hearts were willing to. This wasn’t food we were trying to ration out, or punishment we had to dish out in careful proportions. This was LOVE we’re talking about. Surely if there was one thing we all needed a bit of extra of, love would be it right? What’s wrong with genuinely caring for someone? Must we really put a cap on it? To say you are receiving too much love and care is like saying you have too much money. It may be a problem, but it’s a good problem right?
But it looks more and more to me like there is such a thing as too much love, and there is such a thing as caring too much where you care isn’t wanted or welcomed. I felt so strongly that love was something everyone was meant to give out freely, and for others to receive wholeheartedly. It was supposed to be a universal token of togetherness and oneness. I always thought that being a recipient of love was the privilege. And if you were in a position to make people privileged, nothing should stop you. But as it turns out, you aren’t always allowed to show love in ways you want to. Certain levels of care are reserved for special people. You had to have the privilege of being one of those special people before you’re allowed to care for the person.
We always complain that nobody seems to care about us, but I realized that many times, we don’t want just anybody to care for us, we want the right people to care in the right amounts. And by the same token, we don’t want certain people to care too much. We’re picky…. not just in the love we give, but also the love we receive. Maybe it’s something to do with the reciprocal nature of love; we always love someone back in the magnitude in which they love us. I guess in some ways, we don’t want the person to care so much because we don’t really want to have to care too much for that person either.
Maybe it was just silly idealist who said that the human heart has an infinite capacity to love. Maybe it was a fool that said that love can only grow when it’s given. And most people talk only about giving when it comes to love. Not many talk about the receiving of it. I guess the cold hard reality is that for many, there are only so many people they can care for in their lives. And when it really comes down to it, you got to pick and choose. It used to just involve choosing who you love. Now it seems it also involves choosing who you allow to love you.
I don’t know why coming to this realization is leaving me with such a distasteful feeling inside. This realization that even in the giving of love there are rules and limitations is irksome. I never thought that one person could find displeasure in being loved by another. I don’t like what I just found out, though I find it harder and harder to ignore this truth as the days go by. I hear it from the lips of others, I feel it in the silence of my own heart. This isn’t how it should be. We have limited the capacity of other people to love because of our own inability to reciprocate. Am I the only one who thinks that is tragic?
The wings of love should never be clipped by our own inability to soar to its heights.
But then again….what do I know. I’m just a silly idealist with silly notions of love....
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