The 7 Billion Relationship

I often wonder how, in a world population of over 7 billion, two people find each other, fall in love, and take the vow to live together for the rest of their life. It’s incredible, it’s mammoth. Think about it: until that moment of ‘discovery’, two people may not even know each other; one doesn’t know that the other exists; one only knows that someone somewhere is made for everyone. You could counter-argue saying we don’t meet with everyone on the planet and then decide who we feel is the best for us. We don’t even get to see everyone in a continent, or for that matter in our own country.  Does this then make it any less fascinating than it is?

Life is a strange journey. In a life span of 30 years, for example, how many people do you think you would have met? Few hundreds? Few thousands? Or even more than that? Could be. With the mobile life we have today, and with an increasingly shrinking world around us, we get to come in contact with more number of people than our ancestors used to. So, the people we meet are not limited to any particular place or religion or community or language. It’s vaster than that. No matter how good or how bad we are, we all find a soulmate. Is there a divine angle to it?

Or is it about less coincidence and more compromise? In an ideal ‘free-for-all’ world, we may want to fall for whoever we find good enough for us. One may want to spend the rest of their life with just about anyone they choose to. But that doesn’t happen and we know it won’t. We’re conditioned to accept certain rules and terms that influence most of the things we do in life, including choosing a life partner. We seek familiarity and convenience in our search. We usually don’t believe who we think could be our dream match is ‘gettable’. We therefor tread the path that offers more certainty and assurance. It’s not a one-way lane; there are two people who have to mutually like and love each other before they could commit. That moment of commitment in itself is such a magical point in time. Half of the world’s youth are of the opposite gender, and we choose just one out of those billion possibilities. That must be very, very special!

Two people unite as one body and one soul. Or they at least attempt to. People who are generally not blood related, who come from different families, and potentially from different cultures. It’s phenomenal how they realize what they’ve been chasing in the name of dream is actually the reality and they time and again fall in love with that real dream. The best dream is one that stems out of reality. They discover unknowns about each other; they like some and like to discard some. They accept imperfections, they smile at each other’s stark flaws. They realize life wasn’t meant to be all rosy, and yet they cling on to every moment of togetherness as if that was the grandest gift of all. The ultimate triumph of every relationship is the point of collective realization that in a transition from ‘me’ to ‘us’, there shall be patches of compromises, sacrifices, arguments and disagreements; yet that’s the celebration of love. Even if there was going to be life after death, we get only one life at a time. It’s too precious and too short to waste doing anything but love. 

Tiny moments of union add up to the making of an eternity of togetherness through this life, and possibly beyond.