About Love and Eternal Bliss

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In the Netflix series ‘The Crown’ an interesting sub-plot that unfolds is the love story of Princess Margaret. Her love for her father, The King’s equerry Peter Townsend meets a lot of challenges which the couple overcome over the years only to face the final ‘no’ and part ways eventually.

As they bid goodbye they vow to each other, never to love another person or marry in this lifetime.

Years later, Princess Margaret receives a letter from Peter Townsend stating that he has now found someone that he wishes to marry and wants her permission to break the vow they took.

Watching the episode, I began to wonder what Princess Margaret’s mental state would have been after reading this letter from the man she loved dearly, finally finding the happiness they wished for together, but with someone else.

And here is me, eternally obsessed with the series now, trying to pen down what her thoughts might have been like – about love and eternal bliss.

When I was younger I thought love was the greatest treasure of all; that finding it would make me the happiest person on earth. But now I know it is a Pandora’s Box, once opened we can never be the same ever again.

Love is a gamble. Not in the cards for all. Love is a bargain that we make with ourselves in the hopes that what we wish for is what is written in our destiny. Yes love is important. Yes Love is kind. Yes it is divine. But to love is to tread on one’s toes on ice.

Love is a luxury, a privilege not bestowed on us all. Some find it to keep it for a lifetime. Some find it to lose it to the waves of time and tide.

Love is expectations that the emotions we feel will always be reciprocated in the same intensity and vigor by the people we love. But again, all hues of red are not the same.

Yes I have loved. Yes I have cherished each memory I painted with love. But there is nothing worse than losing the one thing that we love, knowing that neither we, nor our lives will ever be the same.

There are scars and then there are shards of glass in our hearts. Scars heal, shards don’t. They keep pricking us in every move we make. Try removing them and risk the loss of bleeding ourselves to death. To lose love is to break the glass walls of desire inside our hearts, to know that we will never be able to look at our life the same way ever again.

And then to watch the one we love find happiness in someone that is not us, is to take those shards of glass inside our hearts, and mutilate ourselves again and again.

I have always actively defended the idea of being in love, the act of being with someone, hoping for a future of togetherness and eternal bliss. But is it worth the gamble we play with our destiny? Is it worth the risk we put ourselves in? Is it worth the endurance we need to build? Is it worth the attempts we make to un-learn and re-learn every moment in our lives trying to make sense of the chaos we have put ourselves in?

Now that I am older I say ‘To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven’. The season of love may come for a day; give us moments to cherish for a lifetime. But that season of love might not ever stay, for as long as we are on this earth.

To love is make a bet with our hearts, a promise to never break it, knowing that one day eventually it will.

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