Love etc.

Well, having read Shantaram, there was this one line that really stuck to my memory. "I love you but I'm not in love with you." Profound words, I guess these are. And last night, I met a friend. A very dear friend. We sat by the street and discussed at length what it meant by being in love and what it meant to love. It's really hard for me to understand the difference. And then I said something to her, and that, in its entirety, hit me only this morning. I realized that when you love someone, you're willing to let that person go. To love, one has to learn to let go. But how does one do that?
She sat by me last night out there. I know I love her, and that she loves me. But there's this small difference in our love. I am IN LOVE with her... whereas she's not in love with me, she just loves me. She loves me for the fact that I make her feel special whenever I speak with her,that I bring tears to her eyes when I sing to her, that I make her feel wanted. She's beautiful. She has the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen on anyone in my entire life. Her laughter is like the sound of little bells, it's infectious. You'd hear her giggle, and you'd want to hold her to yourself and never let her go, for letting go would make you sad again, and you'd just want to be happy forever... For that selfish joy, you'd want to hug her forever.
Having said all this, I still did not hold her. I did not hug her. I just sat there in great pain. The pain of knowing that she'll never be mine. The pain of knowing that she'll always love me but never be in love with me. And I smiled at her, if only to see her smile back. To see those beautiful green brown eyes sparkling with joy. And I know that she'll belong to someone else someday. That someday those eyes will sparkle all the more, with ever more of that special glint and she'll be in love with that person. For once, she'll not just love someone, she'll actually be in love with that person. And that feeling of completeness that one gets on knowing that another human being will stand by them no matter what.
And then one returns to innocence when one falls in love. You know, they're right when they say that love brings that shine into one's skin. That one shines all the brighter for themselves, and for the one that one loves. Because once you've surrendered to someone, you're like a child who has absolute and complete faith on the world around him. So sure that nothing can take his perfect little world from him. And that surety, that security, is what makes a child unconditionally happy. So, when someone says that they're in love with someone, and you can see it in their eyes, believe me, it's not an illusion.