Unconditional.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
-- William Shakespeare

This one was one of my most favourite poems and works of Shakespeare when I was a teenager. My cousin once wrote this to me in the numerous letters we exchanged as Friends, literature lovers and pen pals. She used to send me poems in English and Hindi literature and even lyrics form movie songs that were dripping with love. She and I - both fantasized to find true love the way Shakespeare, Akthar and Bachchan (the senior poet Bachchan!:-)) described it - without impediments, without alterations and all that:-)

I grew out of romantic lyrics, verses and Mills and Boons but found Love similar to what Shakespeare perceived it to be. Now , fifteen years from when I first read and fell in love with the sonnet, I feel that my own perception and scope of love has broadened, matured and evolved enough to see that Shakespeare was talking about the marriage of true "minds" and the love here is not the romantic and amorous kind alone that exists between a lover and love. Now I look at Love more as an underlying universal emotion that keeps the lives of all living creatures going - including trees, animals and human beings. Yeah, I said trees. Dating back to middle school, I did read a lesson in English where a scientist proved that trees that are loved thrived better. And I actually performed his experiment on the December plants(with flowers that bloom in December , named after the month:-) in our backyard. I would say to one plant aloud " I love you" and turn to the plant adjacent to it and say " I don't love you" Eventually, it could be my imagination, but the hated plant bloomed less.

So the point here is to love. And also the point extends to loving without admitting impediments, alterations and any other hindrances love might encounter. Love, be it the one we share with a close friend, a sibling, a significant other, our own child or ourselves should be unconditional. It should give room for mistakes, heartbreaks, imperfections and still keep on at loving and rising above all these things. I know of great friendships that were ruined because one of the friends caused the other some pain. I know of broken marriages since one cannot accommodate the mistakes/shortcomings of the other and I know of perfectionist parents who disowned their kids because they chose their partners against the parents' wishes. So are all these actually love or something else? It is one thing to not budge from loving when we have external factors involved but true love is something that accepts the other person as he or she is without trying to change them the way we want him or her to be. Aarti is unruly sometimes. I have a back ache and she wants me to carry her. She doesn't let me go to the toilet peacefully and wants to go poop the minute I server myself my meal. I get irritated but never cease to love her. She is my baby and I bend the way she wants me to bend. Eventually I'll have discipline come in but I am sure I'll forgive her for all her known and unknown mistakes and I'll not nurture the hope that she'll grow up to be the person I like her to be. I think that is mother's love and that is the purest of all.
If I ever have a problem with a friend or a sibling or any person that I remotely love, I'll have to love them in the purest possible way - like I would love my child. Impediments, alterations and heartbreaks should look for adobes somewhere else. And I will be more forgiving on myself and be faithfully in love with the soul that lives in my body as well.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.
Love is not love which alters when it alterations finds:-)