Are Love and Like Alike?

Love, a most common but the rarest of topic that we as humans clearly understand and make a mistake about. When I say a mistake, it doesn’t mean Love is a mistake but that we are mistaken. How? Let’s see

I remember once in my junior school days there was some story writing competition and the topic was ”Love”, I to my level of understanding then wrote about two pages on it. But the funny thing was, it was a story competition but I wrote an essay without a story in it. My teacher after the evaluation called me and told me that what you wrote was good but the story was missing. So, it can be concluded here that I knew about love somehow then but no stories about it.

But what is “love” and I would introduce a similar term here “like” and so what is the difference or are both same, this needs to be understood. In our intermediate school level and college life, we encounter these both the like and love factor. Once someone asked Buddha, what is the difference between “I like you” and “I love you”? He being Buddha answered it beautifully saying, when you like a flower, you just pluck it. But when you love a flower, you water it daily. Something clicked!!

I had an experience and most of us usually might have experienced the same, when someone has a crush on us or we have on someone. The person comes to us and says I like you and we mean it as I love you. But there is a difference, isn’t it. So according to me love and like is

L	Longing		L	Looking
O	Over		I	Interestingly  and
V	Valued		K	Keenly
E	Experiences		E	Evaluating

And the differences are

Love	Like
Natural process	Influential Process
Remains the same	Changes as the days past
Life long	Momentary
Slow process	Instantaneous or Faster Process
Unconditional	Conditional

·         Longing vs. Looking

“Longing” here means wishing to have it at any cost and feeling restless and “looking” means just noticing something that gets you interested.

·         Over vs. Interestingly

“Over” as in the chances of possessing the same by any means and “interestingly” means to find that attracts your interest or something that is different from others.

·         Valued vs. Keenly

“Valued” because it is something you value above everything and “Keenly” to make it match with your thoughts or ideas.

·         Experiences vs. Evaluating

“Experiences” are the moments which bring a sense of joy, peace and excitement in our minds and ”Evaluating” to make the checklist apt selections and  finding the odds.

To like somebody or something is based on the quality in that person or thing which is different from others or because it is having something similar to us – our behaviour, our qualities, our thoughts, etc. But this converts into love, when we are willing to do anything for that thing or person and not able to get that, causes a sensation of missing something.

I had friends who liked someone and expressed their feelings to those selected people but due to that person not expressing the same thing as expected they went into a feeling of negation, escapism, and does not feel the courage to face these people again. As Buddha said, I would like to quote they were trying to pluck that flower and hence, they felt bad. If they had really loved them, they would have loved the person or thing even though they were not loved back, they might have felt different. Eventually we all know, what belongs to us will come to us and which doesn’t will get away from us even though we have it.

And the most important of all is that, it is easy to love someone but to make them love you back is difficult. So I would say, continue to love the people you do as much you can but don’t hurt yourself neither them when you face with rejection. Instead be as you are and continue to love them, if they feel the same they will return else just go with the flow as God has better plans for you. Keep loving and liking……

“Mohabbat na hi sahi pasand hi kar lete hai

Izhar toh kar hi chuke hai,  abb nibah bhi lete hai”

Do share your thoughts in comments below…..