Pokemon has a very beautiful premise that I still follow to this very day in everything I do - you gotta start small with the basics (like Bulbasaur, Charmander or Squirtle) and then progressively evolve yourself to reach new levels. I can’t really expect to go from 0 to 100 without learning the ropes.

But everything has nuance, this concept of “evolving” can easily lead to wrong intentions. It’s very evident when you play the Pokemon game. To reach the final Nth stage you need to achieve X and Y at stage N-1, and to get X and Y you need to get X-1 and Y-1 at stage N-2 and so on and so forth. So one can easily strategize and be fixated solely on the end goal and completely forget about the journey which can sometimes lead to a path of misery.

I was very much like this (and maybe still am, old habits die hard). And the most scary part was I never realized I had my intentions completely in the wrong place. It only clicked when I was casually discussing with a friend of mine, who self claimed to have achieved perfect grades in school, got admission to prestigious university and aced academics and placements, got a top of the line job, quickly climbed the ladder and doing extremely well and yet “failed to ace love life”. The focus on wanting and achieving love was so high that we forget that the sole purpose of love is to give it away and not want it.

I was behaving the same my whole life too. I want XYZ, I deserve ABC, personality type MNO makes me happy, should speak love language PQR, attachment style EFG yadayada… I was just trying to level up my Pokemons and was focused on my own ego and self service the whole time, completely missing the point! One could argue that they can find someone they want and live their whole lives comfortably, but how do you know if that was the final level? What if there were higher levels of experiences that I completely turned away from because of my ignorance, just like I did so far in my life?

So this begs the question - What even is love? Is it even important?

ਸਾਚੁ ਕਹੋਂ ਸੁਨ ਲੇਹੁ ਸਭੈ ਜਿਨ ਪ੍ਰੇਮ ਕੀਓ ਤਿਨ ਹੀ ਪ੍ਰਭ ਪਾਇਓ ॥੯॥੨੯॥