Falling In Love
When we are in love, the person we love cannot be compared with or replaced by anybody else. S/he is unique, the only living being capable of giving us joy. No one else we meet, not even our favourite film star, would satisfy us. If our beloved is not there, the world turns arid and empty. A person in love, toying with a daisy and playing at “S/he loves me, s/he loves me not”, knows that nothing will be strong enough to uproot their love. Yet at the same time the fear exists that the loved one may be seduced and carried away by someone else. For this reason the lover keeps on asking: “Do you love me?”, and never tires of hearing the same reply: “Yes, I do”. This is the one and only landmark in the lover’s world. The whole universe has changed its pivot and now revolves exclusively around the loved one. This love is a precondition for any other desire, any other activity.
A person in love is in an extraordinary condition, living on a high, in a state of ecstasy. Plato considered falling in love a delirium inspired by the gods, a divine madness, like artistic inspiration and the gift of prophecy. A person in love sees everything transfigured - nature, the air, rivers, lights, colours are all brighter and more intense. Lovers feel drawn by a cosmic force towards their goal and destiny, and the contradictions of everyday life lose meaning. They feel like slaves or prisoners, yet happy and free at the same time. They suffer and are tormented, but would never want to stop loving.
Falling in love acts on psyches like heat on metals. It makes them fluid and incandescent so they can mix and flow into each other and take on new shapes which then solidify. Love makes people malleable, it moulds them, modifies them and welds them together. In this way it produces strong bonds that can withstand trauma, conflicts and disappointments.
We can fight against love, reject it and make every effort to stay away from the people we love in an attempt to forget them. We can deem them bad, wicked and cruel, and we can even hate them. We can see love as an illness and torment ourselves with doubt and jealousy. Yet love ticks on just the same. It takes us over and masters us. It is something that goes against our better judgment or succeeds in swaying it. Even when we are treated badly by our loved ones, we are always ready to find excuses. We think that, if we were able to touch certain strings in their hearts, changes would take place. When we are in love we are convinced we know our loved ones better than they know themselves. And we think that they could not fail to love us back if they really knew themselves.
Even if falling in love is a short-lived experience, it makes us think we will be in love forever, come what may. It brings the words of the marriage vows spontaneously to our lips: “I take you... for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part”.
Falling in love makes us love our loved ones for what they are, so that even defects, failings or illnesses are bearable. When we fall in love, it is like opening our eyes. We see a wonderful world and our beloved appears to us as marvellous. Every being is perfect, unique, unmistakable. So we are grateful to our loved ones for existing, because their existence enriches not only us but the whole world. Propertius writes: “Tu mihi sola domus, tu Cynthia solo parentes omnia tu nostrae tempora laetitia”. He does not merely say “I like you and desire you”, but “You alone are my home, you alone my parents, you are my every moment of happiness”.
It is in this way that a mother sees her child and a child its mother. Yet the bond of falling in love is formed suddenly between two people who have never met before. Falling in love makes two strangers feel a strong affinity, a common essence which goes beyond their conscious selves. For this they can say: “I am you and you are me”. In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes explains this kind of experience and says that human beings were once an indivisible unity which Zeus tore apart, and they have been searching for their other half ever since.
Nevertheless, in contrast to a blood bond that “exists” and is “taken for granted”, this kind of bond needs to be worked on and strengthened. Lovers feel the fulfilment of their love as a sacred duty, like a summons to the service of their country or their faith. A person in love feels duty bound to make a commitment, establish a pact and take a vow. Love is therefore not only pleasure, desire, feeling and passion, but also commitment, vow and promise. Lovers are not only obliged to think “forever” but also to commit themselves “forever”. Love is a project for building something that is meant to last in time...
Subject: Falling in love 
Fri Nov 13 2009, 05:46
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