An affair in
office is a state that everyone should wish for. No matter how many
contradictions there maybe, the experiences brought by such an encounter can
never be ignored. The important thing here is that the romance at work doesn’t
become another marriage. The question a lot of people bring out here is ‘what’s
the whole point of it? There’s no ultimate outcome, is there?’
Just as life
is all about living, love is all about loving. There’s no need for it to
transform into something else. That existence, that outflow, it’s all about the
moment where that space is shared. But we are used to an ultimate conclusion. A
destination.To create a corporation out of love. Sometimes this even brings
about an end to love. (If marriage is not sustained in a way which is unlike a marriage,
I think love dies there. We meet plenty of such dead people living together on
a daily basis)
Firstly,
love at any given point or way cannot be in bane. On the other hand if it’s
counted as bane in contrast to another construction, there can be no such
construction which is worthy of securing more than love itself. By attempting to
control or sensor a love that even spurs up in a moment and dies away at the
next, we expect to protect a condensed or a numbed state in our lives. Any matter can be
wrong but love can never be wrong at any time under any circumstance.
A few months
ago, Randu gifted me with the book “Adultery” of Paulo Coelho. There are some
books that change the reader during the process of reading itself. Books that
pushes you into freedom and into another layer of thinking. I have come across
two such books of Coelho. One is this and the other is Eleven Minutes. I don’t
feel that even the Alchemist that’s counted as his masterpiece is as
influential as these two books.
Coelho goes
into deep soulful discussions of illicit romances in his book Adultery.
“Learn to love better. This should be
our goal in the world: learn to love. Life offers us thousands of opportunities
for learning. Every man and every woman, in every day of our lives, always has
a good opportunity to surrender to Love. Life is not a long vacation, but a
constant learning process. And the most important lesson is learning to love.
Loving better and better... But one thing will be forever marked on the soul of
the universe: my Love. All in spite of my mistakes, my decisions that caused
others to suffer, and the moments when I thought it didn't exist.” ― Paulo Coelho,
Adultery
We spend the
most amount of time of our day in office or at a place of work. In other words
the best time of the day is spent there. Other than the weekends and the few
hours in the night, we live our lives inside our job. From a romantic relationship,
it gives a different meaning to that entire time spent there.
In terms of
‘work’ such affairs helps to shift the frustrations of a job into a condition
where every moment is spent with eagerness and cheer. I think companies should
also promote such relationships because it brings about such good results in
terms of productivity. Also it makes way to have a romantic human vibe inside
the organization.
Even in
terms of the society instead of a life that’s squared into a family, a life
that renews its youthfulness and freedom is proposed by this ‘ill’icity. These
relationships can give a fresh breath to the lethargic or dying family lives.
The moment
we speak about this, there can be criticism arising from within ourselves about
the issues in this related to sex and chaos it can bring into the family. Such
issues and criticism doesn’t go beyond the basics of sexual jealousy and
respecting social conditionings we are accustomed to. In truth, we enter new universes in such
relationships. Our time stretches on illogical human moments. In the end we are
left with a choice, if life is a straight line or weather it’s a cloud like
uncertain bran.
Coelho
writes a beautiful description on such sensitivities of love.
“Some people say that, as summer
approaches, we start to have weird ideas; we feel smaller because we spend more
time out in the open air, and that makes us aware of how large the world is.
The horizon seems farther away, beyond the clouds and the walls of our house.”
― Paulo Coelho, Adultery
The
negatives of such relationships really come about when these relationships
attempt to replace older relationships. Meaning, these relationships also see
the need of adhering to norms. It yearns again for the protection of an orderly
and mechanical relationship. This can make many unpleasant things take place.
Because it’s a state just like the marriage spoken of earlier.
“Going after a dream has a price. It
may mean abandoning our habits, it may make us go through hardships, or it may
lead us to disappointment, et cetera. But however costly it may be, it is never
as high as the price paid by people who didn’t live. Because one day they will
look back and hear their own heart say: ‘I wasted my life.”
― Paulo Coelho, Adultery
The most
important thing is that love exists beyond the registered time of the clock.
That’s a human accident. To a certain extent a parallel universe. We enter into
another universe from our usual subjective universe. We stride across universes
like time travelers.
An illicit
affair is submission to a feeling of risk disregarding social norms or bonds.
Only a very few people takes such free steps with concern matters of life. We
are bound to then write letters in a paper without any lines. Its up to us to
decide whether we are going to go ahead writing along straight lines even if
there are no real lines or whether we are going to write everywhere all across
the paper.
The most
important result of office romances is that people are uprooted from the
boundaries of their households. The creation of a life that’s re-shared with
the society beyond the sustenance of households. The normal reality of Sri
Lanka is that once you create a family you disown a life that’s beyond the four
walls of that household.
“That’s why we like fish in
aquariums; they remind us of ourselves, well fed but incapable of moving beyond
the glass walls.”
― Paulo Coehlo, Adultery
I was
thinking recently why every public discussion or meeting begins in Sri Lanka at
3pm and that also during weekdays. With concern to the organizations, at a
least short leave is required to be given. But the meetings always happen at
3pm. A main reason for this could be the meetings are required to be held
during the working time itself. Even though people are willing to commit time
out of ‘working time’ for a social cause or need, they are not ready commit hours
out of their ‘household time’. No matter how many positive facts there may be
in creating a family, the trapped lives lived by the majority is not an
effective state for the society. This is a situation similar to roads. Many
vehicles refrain from crossing lines not because of accidents but for the fear
of Police. On the other hand unlike vehicle accidents, human accidents are
beautiful experiences.
These
unauthorized romances bring people back to an open society from family society.
It proposes a human space that can accept uncertainties, weaknesses and
contradictions. It creates flexibility in structures that are numbed and
condensed.
“Let yourself get carried away by the
night from time to time. Look up at the stars and try to get drunk on the sense
of infinity. The night, with all its charms, is also a path to enlightenment.
Just as a dark well has thirst-quenching water at its bottom, the night, whose
mystery brings us closer to the mystery of God, has a flame capable of
enkindling our soul hidden in its shadows.” ― Paulo Coelho, Adultery
Even amidst
of thousand insults illicit/ office romances are doing a lot of progressive
work that even go beyond producing creative energy into monotonous patterns of
the mind and body. It takes us back into risk. It challenges our consistency
and stand. It’s a moment where life goes ablaze as fast as hydrogen. No one who is alive can refrain from going in
flames at a moment as such.
Chitnhana Dharmadasa 
