Happy love day everyone! As much as I like challenging myself and my writing skills (which need a lot of attention and practice), the following words are a re-post from an article I found online. It is a beautiful summary of pretty much everything that has been going in my head lately, and over the past few years, yet someone had expressed it better than I ever could. These words are not intended to be the obsolete truth, but rather to serve as a reminder, to myself, that love and relationships are the flowers of life. If we choose to tend to them and have them in our gardens, we need to care for them, water, protect and nourish them so they can bloom and flourish. That people’s hearts are not to be taken for granted because as the Fox said to the Little Prince “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”. So lets start inviting in only the people who can see us with their hearts and not solely with their heads or eyes.  

Why are relationships so hard today? Why do we fail at love every time, despite trying so hard? Why have humans suddenly become so inept at making relationships last? Have we forgotten how to love? Or worse, forgotten what love is?

We’re not prepared. We’re not prepared for the sacrifices, for the compromises, for the unconditional love. We’re not ready to invest all that it takes to make a relationship work. We want everything easy. We’re quitters. All it takes is a single hurdle to make us crumble to our feet. We don’t let our love grow, we let go before time.

It’s not love we’re looking for, only excitement and thrill in life. We want someone to watch movies and party with, not someone who understands us even in our deepest silences. We spend time together, we don’t make memories. We don’t want the boring life. We don’t want a partner for life, just someone who can make us feel alive right now, this very instant. When the excitement fades, we discover nobody ever prepared us for the mundane. We don’t believe in the beauty of predictability because we’re too blinded by the thrill of adventure.

We immerse ourselves in the inconsequentials of the city life, leaving no space for love. We don’t have time to love, we don’t have the patience to deal with relationships. We’re busy people chasing materialistic dreams and there’s no scope to love. Relationships are nothing more than convenience.

We look for instant gratification in everything we do – the things we post online, the careers we choose, and the people we fall in love with. We want the maturity in a relationship that comes with time, the emotional connect that develops over years, that sense of belonging when we barely even know the other person. Apparently, nothing’s worth our time and patience – not even love.

We’d rather spend an hour each with a hundred people than spending a day with one. We believe in having ‘options’. We’re ‘social’ people. We believe more in meeting people than getting to know them. We’re greedy. We want to have everything. We get into relationships at the slightest attraction and step out, the moment we find someone better. We don’t want to bring out the best in that one person. We want them to be perfect. We date a lot of people but rarely give any of them a real chance. We’re disappointed in everyone.

Technology has brought us closer, so close that it’s impossible to breathe. Our physical presence has been replaced by texts, voice messages, snapchats and video calls. We don’t feel the need to spend time together anymore. We have too much of each other already. There’s nothing left to talk about.

We’re a generation of ‘wanderers’ who wouldn’t stay at one place for too long. Everyone is commitment phobic. We believe we’re not meant for relationships. We don’t want to settle down. Even the thought of it is scary. We cannot imagine being with one person for the rest of our lives. We walk away. We despise permanence like its some social evil. We like to believe we’re ‘different’ than the rest. We like to believe we don’t conform to social norms.

We’re a generation that calls itself ‘sexually liberated’. We can tell sex apart from love, or so we think. We’re the hook-up-break-up generation. We have sex first and then decide if we want to love someone. Sex comes easy, loyalty doesn’t. Getting laid has become the new getting drunk. You do it not because you love the other person, but because you want to feel good. It’s all the temporary fulfillment we need. Sex outside relationships isn’t a taboo anymore. Relationships aren’t that simple anymore. There are open relationships, friends with benefits, causal flings, one-night stands, no strings attached – we’ve left very little exclusivity for love in our lives.

We’re the practical generation who runs by logic alone. We don’t know how to love madly anymore. We wouldn’t take a flight to a far-off land just to see someone we love. We’d break up because, long distance. We’re too sensible for love. Too sensible for our own good.

We’re a scared generation – scared to fall in love, scared to commit, scared to fall, scared to get hurt, scared to get our hearts broken. We don’t allow anyone in, nor do we step out and love anyone unconditionally. We lurk from behind walls we’ve created ourselves, looking for love and running away the moment we really find it. We suddenly ‘cannot handle it’. We don’t want to be vulnerable. We don’t want to bare our soul to anyone. We’re too guarded.

We don’t even value relationships anymore. We let go of the most wonderful people for ‘the other fishes in the sea.’ We don’t consider them sacred anymore.

There’s nothing we couldn’t conquer in this world, and yet, here we are ham-fisted at the game of love – the most basic of human instincts. Evolution, they call it.

By Ankush Bahuguna

Find original source here.

And now back to my usual blog content. Hope you didn’t think I will forget to include a recipe. This one for Mexican Truffles and it comes with a slight kick and lots of chocolate, so I hope you are ready for it.

xo xo

Mexican Chocolate Truffles

Ingredients:
Makes about 50 (1/2-inch) truffles

• 16 oz. (450 gr) good quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 3/4 cup (180 ml) heavy cream
• 1 vanilla bean
• 5 tbsp (70 gr) unsalted butter at a room temperature
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1 tsp chipotle pepper, divided in half
• 1/2 cup Dutch cocoa powder

Directions:

Place the cream in a small saucepan. Scrape the vanilla bean and add it to the saucepan. Heat over meduim-high heat and bring to a gentle boil. 

Place the chocolate and the butter in a medium heatproof bowl and top with the hot cream. Let it sit for 1 minute to allow the chocolate to melt. Stir with rubber spatula until smooth. If chocolate chunks are still present, place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir until all chocolate has melted. 

Add cinnamon, cardamom and 1/2 of the chipotle pepper. Taste and add the remaining 1/2 tsp of chipotle pepper if desired.

Allow mixture to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Refrigerate for 2–3 hours or until just firm. 

Roll teaspoonfuls of the truffle mixture into balls and place on a large baking tray. Roll truffles in the cocoa powder until it is coated evenly. Keep refrigerated until ready to be enjoyed.