You Can't Hurry Love!

This one was published in iDiva....

"I love you. Will you marry me?"

That was my first proposal, when I was all of nine years old. So was he, a classmate smitten by my prepubescent charms. Needless to say, I ran, a hundred miles least. 

I can always laugh at that one and at all the other advances that the opposite sex made through my teenage years, the most famous being, "I want to do friendship with you." Duh, I know!

The teenage years passed into only marginally wiser twenties with too many expectations and some very well deserved heartbreaks.

As I retrospect now into the eager years gone by in search of love and all those times that I did not find it, I wonder, what is the rush to be in love?

Falling in love, is part of growing up. And before long, the heart beats wildly, the cheeks flush to a deep red, the tongue ties itself up, all at the mere glimpse of the revered one. Who can forget a first love, sweet and innocent as it is? But while the heart thumps away happily, it also does not know what it wants as life lures it away to other avenues predetermined by destiny. Time passes, the world grows bigger, and the first love does not always keep up with the pace. And yet it remains, forever, warming life from a distant past.

While first love can be sacrosanct, others aren't so, as I learnt, quite painfully. There can be no telling when Cupid's arrow might strike and, there is also no telling how many times it could. Ambitions change with maturity, as do the outlook to life. People change, and so do relationships. Adjustments start to feel like unbearable burdens. The world demands enough compromises already to want to come home to a few more. And every time, it took courage to walk away from what I did not want. After all, love isn't supposed to feel bad.

Coffee is a great eye opener, as I found out one morning. For years I had prided myself in accurately understanding others. But did I really know myself? Do we, at all, understand ourselves? That difficult question raises a million more, each warranting a deep delve into the soul for a rightful answer and search for a path forgotten or relive a dream set aside. As I searched, I found myself, and I fell in love. With myself.

One day, when I wasn't looking, love knocked on the door, asking for sugar for a cup of tea, a new neighbor, a familiar stranger. Like a breath of fresh air, fragrant and blessed, it stayed on permeating its sweetness deeper and deeper each day. When time tested it unleashing its darkest hours, it grew, stronger instead of weaker. Two years later, the question that had made me once run a hundred miles least smiled at me, I ran again, only this time into love's open arms.

It took me years to understand, you can't hurry love...