Is it really you? No, it is not. It has never really been you.
It has always been U.
And all this time I have been longing for you and hence I have missed out on U!
My brainwashing started earnest in 1958.
As a twelve-year-old, I passionately sang along with Paul Anka that:
‘I am just a lonely boy..’
So, what was the remedy?
‘Someone to love, someone to kiss, someone to hold at a moment like this’
And whom should I love?
Only you!
‘Only you can make all this world seem right, only you can make the darkness bright.
You’re my dream come true, my one and only you’
Really? It took Paul Anka himself, three tries at ‘only you’ before he settled on his third wife.
But as far as I was concerned, I was convinced that:
‘You are my destiny, you share my reverie, you are my happiness, that what you are.
You’re more than life to me, that’s what you are’
The trouble was that I have never found a ‘you’ who was ‘my dream come true, my one and only you’.
This has tested my hope, but I have never given up trying to find ‘my destiny’, ‘my one and only you’.
Surely, ‘you’ must be out there; Paul Anka promised. And when we find each other, all our dreams will come true.
Sure; and pigs will fly.
Show me a single ‘you’ who could free me from my loneliness, who could ‘make all this world seem right’, who is ‘my destiny’, who is ‘more than life to me’.
Are these not the very expectations which in reality make every aspirant for being such ‘you’, doomed to fall short?
Yet my yearning for ‘only you’, for ‘my destiny’, who is ’more than life to me’ is strong and may even be valid.
It is a yearning for a true soul mate that makes life truly worth living.
One with whom I can merge and feel one with.
One who has always been there for me for 24/7 and will always be there, who understands me fully, who will always love me no matter what.
With whom I have fallen in love and with whom I shall always stay entirely in love.
Is this an infantile or a realisable and legitimate dream to which I and everyone else is entitled to, as the very essence of life?
To me it is realisable, except that till recently I have been barking up the wrong tree.
I have sought this in ‘you’, but you, whoever you may be, my fellow human being, are not superhuman to ever be able to fit such a bill.
Show me two human beings, two love birds, two soul-mates, who can be there for each other 24 hours a day throughout life!
Impossible!
Yet my heart yearns for such soul mateship.
An impossible dream?
Not quite.
Even if I cannot fit the bill, at least my soul mate U can.
Perfectly!
For this, it is U not ‘you’, whom I need to love above all.
Then I can sing without the slightest disappointment:
‘Only U can make all this world seem right, only U can make the darkness bright,
Only U and U alone can thrill me like U do
And fill my heart with love for only U.’
So, ‘U are my destiny’, U are ‘more than life to me; that’s what U are’.
So, who are U, who has been my one and only true lover but to whom I have not given myself, because I confused U with ‘you’, with every real and imagined you whom I have ever idolised?
U are the eternal one U-nited, U-nlimited, U-nconditional Lover, U-nique and U-niversal Being in whom I have always been but rarely experienced, because I have been looking for U in you and you and you, not knowing that all this time I have been seeking for U and ‘only U’.
And as I realise U, I can increasingly see, feel, touch and love U, in every you!
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