Do I Need to Be Something to Be Loved?
My father named me Purna.
In Sanskrit, it means complete. Whole. Flawless.
But somewhere along the way, friends found it easier to call me Puran. Just like that — one letter slipped, and the name changed. Nobody planned it. Nobody decided. It just happened the way most things happen in life — quietly, without permission, without announcement.
And I think about that sometimes.
The name that was supposed to mean complete — got altered. Became something slightly different. Something a little less perfect than what was intended.
Maybe that is the most honest thing my life has ever told me.
The Weight of Having to Be Something
There is a quiet exhaustion I carry.
Not the kind that comes from working too hard or sleeping too little. It is a different kind. The kind that comes from constantly arranging yourself. Adjusting. Performing.
I have to be smart enough. I have to look good enough. I have to say the right thing at the right time. I have to present myself in a way that makes people want to stay.
And underneath all of that — a question I rarely say out loud:
If I stop performing, will anyone still be here?
What Evolution Tells Us
I know what the science says.
Our brains are wired for survival. We look for value in others — consciously or not — because for thousands of years, connection meant survival. You stayed close to people who were useful. You moved away from people who were a burden. The brain learned to calculate worth before the heart even had a chance to feel.
So maybe when someone looks at you and asks — what can this person give me, teach me, do for me — it is not cruelty. It is just ancient programming running quietly in the background.
We are, in many ways, walking evolutionary strategies. Biased by emotion. Shaped by environment. Coded by survival.
But here is the question that keeps me up at night —
Are we only that?
Can We Break the Chain?
Are we just the sum of what evolution built and what environment shaped?
Or is there something in us — some quiet, stubborn, luminous part — that can choose differently?
Can we appreciate something not for what it gives us, but simply for what it is?
Can we love someone not for how they make us look, or feel useful, or less alone — but just because they exist, and their existence is enough?
I think we can try.
I think trying is itself a kind of grace.
What Unconditional Actually Means
Unconditional love is not the absence of imperfection. It is the decision to keep seeing someone clearly — all their mess, all their contradiction, all their unfinished edges — and stay anyway.
Not because they earned it. Not because they performed well enough. Not because they are useful or beautiful or impressive.
But because they are.
Imagine a relationship with no comparison. No quiet scorecard running in the background. No hoping the other person will change into something easier to love. Just — stillness. In front of what is actually there. Not what you wish were there.
How rare that is. How divine that would feel.
No chase. No audit. No conditions written in invisible ink.
Just — you are here. I see you. That is enough.
My Name, My Imperfection, My Honesty
My father named me Purna — complete, whole, without flaw.
But I am Puran now. One letter short of perfect. Changed by the casual ease of daily life, by people who meant no harm, by the way things simply shift when nobody is watching.
And I used to feel that quietly. Like I was supposed to be something I never quite became.
But I think — and I really think this now —
Evolution itself is imperfect.
It is a process of mistakes that accidentally worked. Of errors that turned into wings. Of failures that eventually became eyes and hands and hearts that can feel things so deeply they write about them at odd hours of the day.
If the process that built us is imperfect — how could it ever produce something perfect?
And why would we want it to?
The Scars Are the Story
The places where I am broken are the places where I am most honestly myself.
The anxiety. The overthinking. The days I don't look the way I want. The times I say the wrong thing and replay it for hours. The incompleteness. The mess.
These are not flaws in the story.
They are the story.
A perfectly smooth stone has been worn down by water for centuries. The smoothness is not its original nature — it is what happened to it. What was original was jagged, particular, specific. Unrepeatable.
I want to be unrepeatable.
I want to be loved in my jagged, particular, unfinished state — not after I have been worn smooth enough for someone else's comfort.
Can You Love Me Like This?
Incomplete. Messy. Named after wholeness but living in beautiful fragments.
Can you appreciate me without wanting me to be different? Can you see me without immediately measuring me against something better? Can you sit with me in my imperfection and not feel the urge to fix it?
I am not asking for blind acceptance. I am not asking you to pretend the rough edges aren't there.
I am asking for something harder and rarer —
Recognition. Without judgment. Without comparison. Without conditions.
Just — I see you, Puran. Not Purna. Not who you were supposed to be. You. As you are. Right now.
What I Believe
I believe the most radical thing a human being can do in this world is love something unconditionally.
Not because it is easy. It is the hardest thing there is.
But because when it happens — even briefly, even imperfectly — it feels like the only true thing.
No performance required. No achievement necessary. No transformation demanded.
Just stillness. In front of what is.
And the quiet, world-shifting decision to call it enough.
Puran is not Purna. And maybe that is exactly right.
Written with honest hands and an unfinished heart. — Puran
Comments
Post a Comment