I Give You My Love

What is love
Baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more

What if love is quantifiable?

I mean, what if there is a device, a contraption, a thingamajig that one could use to measure love in all its glory? The love that a beloved feels for you. Wouldn't that be awesome?

It might be a needle that you prick into your blood vein, a headgear you wear to monitor brain activity or a blood sugar test to ascertain some arcane chemical reaction when you are in love. Wouldn't it be neat?

I don't know about you, but this nifty contrivance would provide succor to those in dire need of some mediation, revelation or a bit of nudge in the right direction as far as romantic involvement is concerned.

A word of caution is however advised. Attesting to all gradations and phases of love - dating, engagement, cohabitation, marriage - this invention might work for or against you.

For those in a marriage, it could be used as an indicator of a successful union, or conversely, as a warning to a partner lest the other might be straying off. As such, in its pessimistic form, the device could serve as an acid test for that reprehensible and ignominious trait - womanising, cheating, philandering, the whole shebang. Essentially (or perhaps theoretically), it will ward off and nip in the bud infidelity, or thoughts of committing infidelity.

Yet, like any other contraptions that come to pass, this one is undoubtedly not without its hitches. Or rather, a host of circumstances prevent it from becoming effective and therefore from rendering it foolproof.

In the first place, love goes through a cycle. You can never be expected to feel enamoured ALL the time. There will be times when you feel angry at your partner or spouse for uttering hurtful words, imaginable or otherwise, and wish him or her to be out of your sight. Surely, the whatchamacallit might register a low score, at that particular moment in time, for your love towards that person. That would be griveous and misleading indeed.

And how about jealousy? Is that a signal of love or an abomination of love? To which angle would it venture on the Love Scale? Again, the readings might get screwy and misinterpreted by the ones affected, either to their detriment or to their folly.

On the flip side, obsession which is, more often than not, an unhealthy form of love can shoot up in measurement, if certain standards/disclaimers/qualifications fail to be drawn up at the outset. A slew of these outliers prove to be disadvantageous to the device's widespread use and acceptance.

Alas, the practicality of such a thingamabob seems elusive at best, and complicated at worst. What then should we count on (pun intended)? Perhaps when it comes to matters of the heart, there is no such thing as a cookie-cutter, simplistic approach to resolving relationship woes.

Marriages, the most sacred and beautiful of institutions, are full of ups and downs, have its peaks and troughs, and the occasional bump on the road. Naturally, you are not going to experience that gooey-marshmallowey love 24/7. Unless of course you are screwy. There are times when you have to wade through the difficult period, pick up the broken pieces and other clichéd sayings.

Although you no longer feel that initial, euphoric high of love in its heyday of courtship and honeymoon years, the love that you've sown together all those years will be there, like an underbrush, latent yet powerful, giving that immeasurable support to the Marriage tree that the two of you have built from the ground up!

Love develops, grows, and eventually plateaus. A litany of I-Love-Yous might confound the skeptics and melt the die-hard romantics. For the realists however, the three words are fine and dandy but a diminutive gesture of love goes even a long way.


Comic is taken from here
Note: While studying in the States, Saturday Night Live (SNL) had become a weekend fixture for me. The above video is one of memorable skits from the show.