Amor
“Omnia vincit amor: et nos cedamus amori” - Virgil
“Love conquers / overcomes all” or “Love conquers all; let us, too, yield to love”
Yield to love is such a beautiful idea. The word yield has a Germanic root and in essence means to produce and when you think about it: that is what love does. It produces. It creates everything.
We love the idea of tortured artists and pain leading to greatness. This is driven by the human need to make sense of the world. The frontal lobe would like nothing better to reason away in order for the limbic can continue functioning. If we could empathise with all the suffering all the time, we would absolutely be miserable. We need hope and we find it in the human ability to turn suffering into meaning. The form of this meaning has created great art from Van Gogh to Kurt Cobain.
“Nothing I have seen in the world has supported your famous pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of magic, Dumbledore”
”Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places”
- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
I am not a religious person and the only thing I have envied my religious family of, is their unshakable faith in all times. They truly can believe that God has a better plan. That - there is a plan. I don’t believe that there is a plan. I do however, believe in love.
One of my best friends and younger brother used to call me cupid. I had been single all my life and when he was finishing up his last year of college, he used to tell me about the Gen Z dating life. Not betraying any confidences but, I’d say he believed that deep attachments weren’t a real thing. That people couldn’t find time for them and it was much easier to have functional relationships.
I, the cupid that I was named, always proclaimed from my high horse of single hood that no, wonderful relationships do exist. That mutually fulfilling and rewarding relationships can be more than functional. That every rock can create fire as long as you find another to rub onto it. Love happens and then, it takes work to make it work.
Most important thing in life I have learnt is that love is the centre of everything. And, romance isn’t the same as love.
My grandmother gave me a 20Rs note in maybe the early 90s and I have it still. It is a prized possession of mine. There isn’t enough gold in the world that could ever replace that note. She has written a message and it says:
I love my grandmother in present tense. She has been dead for 9 years and I still love her. She loved me into the person I am today and even though, it is cheesy and even though “loving into the person you are” is a concept I borrowed from John Green, it doesn’t make it any less true.
My grandmother was a great woman. For a woman who was born before the partition of India, she was the most unique and headstrong of her kind. Even though she was homeschooled, she valued education over everything else. She was a teacher and principal in addition to being a great mother and grandmother. She was set in her ways yes, but she was open to debate and conversation more than anyone I have met since then. The weird thing is, when I was younger my family would teasingly say: you are like your grandmother and I used to get annoyed.
Now, that I am older I think that if I could ever be that unique and gifted and talented as she became, I’d be a proud person. She didn’t teach me how to love but she showered me with love. My family has always given love without saying that that is what they give. As though, acknowledging it would somehow taint it. How could it ever? How could you taint love?
The beautiful thing about vulnerability is that it sets you free.
I have written to myself in a note from Montepulciano that says: Love is inevitable. I don’t know what I was thinking on that November day of 2019 when I wrote it but I do believe love is inevitable. I was meant to love and nothing else. It’s the only sane thing in this insane world.
In scorching heat, it is possible to look at a purple yellow flower on a tree and think, life is too short to fully appreciate this flower which is sad — but, also it is wonderful to be alive and be able to see the gleam bounce off it. The contrast of golden green leaves against the purple, its sway in the wind and that for the briefest of second it controls my consciousness. To be able to see the beauty in the world, you need to appreciate it.
I don’t mean to say that there isn’t pain or suffering or a global pandemic on right now. Those things are real. Children are molested, women are raped, gunmen shoot innocents, human get trafficked, corruption runs amok, elections use global pandemic for politicking, parents bury their children. All that is terrible from mugging to kidnapping to murder is undeniably real.
But, so is love.
Over time, whenever I felt pain I grew to distance myself from the love that caused it. Aloof myself from feeling any emotion, to become cynical of expression and appreciation, to completely become immune to vulnerability and hide behind the mockery my cowardice chose. It is hard to put your heart on the line in earnest. I did make that easy frontal lobe: love will not last and I should not get emotionally involved.
For all the things that don’t last, love lasts the longest.
There have been countless times in my life where I came to conclusions about love. Both positive and negative. Both in jest and in earnest. Today, I found out that my favourite expression: Amor Vincit Omnia has been Omnia Vincit Amor all along. That I have been wrong in knowing something I thought I knew very well. Amor Vincit Omnia is a painting by Carravagio and probably where it got misappropriated. A painting that is open in another tab, which I glance at occasionally as I write. It contains a naked cupid as a primary subject and all I can wonder is the origin of cupid.
Omnia Vincit Amor is taken from a poem by Virgil. They were the last words spoken by a dying lovesick man named Gallus who’s love for Lycoris is strong and even Gods like Apollo could not treat him. Love is considered a sickness given that the object of his affections has already deserted him. With his last breathe, he utters Omnia Vincit Amor. Love conquers all. Does it mean that love had conquered his life to the extent that he was willing to die for it? Does it mean that he believes that his love would outlive him? Does this mean that love conquered death? The interpretation of that story depends on reader: romanticise Gallus’ sickness or celebrate his belief in love. This man believed that life without love was not worth living.
Do I disagree with that? No.
Do I disagree with the fact that he found only one person to love? Yes.
We do not understand love. It is human to love. We are the only creature we know of that is capable of falling in love. It should be considered a gift but, we don’t appreciate it. We do not express it. Children know how to express love, they learn how to build up barriers. We are conditioned to hide our vulnerabilities from interviews to boardrooms to social situations. To wear a mask where we are certain that if it came off, someone would see the fears of that human heart and treat it as sickness. I see the value of this mask but it is necessary to ask: for how long?
All animals kill and lust and hunger. It is our ability to love that allows us to build where nothing existed. For the people who have not been born yet and overlooking the work of people long dead. Being aware that even though, I will be dead - the love that I can pour into this world might live on is my solace.
Expression of love is not a forte for most people.
However, love conquers / overcomes all.
Special shoutout to my muse and friend, Navagat who didn’t get a mention here. His words triggered me into this. He said to me once: “I cannot give anything but love, as that is all I have.” It is all I have too.