We are living in the inspired times. Everything around us fuels our imagination and we give massive credit to creative thinking. Innovation is at its peak right now. Embracing our individuality and being content with our selves is what the modern culture about. We’ve come a long way in terms of accepting certain ideas and we still have a lot to cover. Pop culture plays an indispensable role in shaping our ideas and thought process. Subconsciously, we borrow certain concepts and manners from the culture that’s enveloping us. However, it’s over emphasis on the state of love has left me chaotic and in double minds.
Pop culture teaches us to fight for love, basically insists on placing it at the highest pedestal. So many movies have talked about foregoing one’s career to live happily with their beloved. This culture constantly feeds on the idea of fairy tales, and love being the driving force of one’s happiness. This emphasis is so strong that a feeling of emptiness engulfs me when I check single. I feel as if something’s wrong with me that I don’t have my “significant other”. In a way, this culture is pressurizing us to succumb to the romantic notions reflected by it. For those who have tasted real love know that it’s about the trivial details and not the extravagant efforts. It’s not at all like the Yash Chopra movies. The flamboyant portrayal of relationships and love on screen, brings mere frustration and a sense of pointless comparison. We end up comparing our equation with our partner with the one shown on screen. We borrow standards from pop culture and set them for our partners. But in practicality it’s kinda stupid to leave your job in Paris to settle with your girlfriend in Mumbai. At the end of the day, romantic lines and the feelings won’t feed you and your “SO”.
The dreamy portrayal of love stories is mostly very far fetched and destroys the essence of love. Why being in love has to be about mindless dreaming? Why is it about superficial acts of “mein tumahare liye chaand laa sakta hoon”? Being in love shouldn’t symbolize losing your sanity. It’s about sitting down, talking about finances, budgeting loans, taking the garbage out, and deciding what’s for dinner. The movies just rigidly fix an idea about what love is for us. When our relationships or marriages fail to deliver those idealistic ideas we are left disappointed. The culture that engulfs us has taught us to believe in love as a supreme power, a power that surpasses sanity and rationality. No, everything is not fair in love. You can’t kill people In the name of love. Stalking is not a way of showing your emotions. Driving the mundane drone of the day to day together, is love. Subconsciously we have imbibed the idea of what love “should” taste like, that we often forget to treasure the everyday moments of love. Because, love does lie in these small, unspoken moments with an individual who encourages us to evolve as a person. The dramatic falls and the fancy eye contacts and the destined “accidental” moments just make you miss out on reality. We enter into a relationship with preconceived notions, thanks to the pop culture, and end up destroying what we have in our hand. Our constant sense of comparison with the characters of the fictional world just builds a castle of delusion for us.
Love is not a state of dancing in the pouring rain together, it’s about being sane enough to run inside because both of you have office tomorrow. Let’s not borrow a superficial idea of love from scripts and book drafts, let’s relish the real and practical moments with our partners. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t had your kiss like Noah and Ali, because you’re not living in between pages. It’s fine if your marriage wasn’t as grand as Karan Johar’s movie. Honestly, it’s your love story, let it be different from the routine lovey douvey world of pop culture.
