7.10.2009
musings from the train - on love
so i, in consultation with the leading experts in the field, have come to the conclusion that falling in love is a chemical and biological reaction that leaves the affected person with no ability to reason and function for the duration of the said reaction and hence without any consideration of long term well-being. it may of course, out of pure luck, turn out that love leads some of us to better futures but no one can deny that the intensity of feelings we experience during the reaction have no bearing on the success of the relationship as a whole or for any specific time frame. take me for instance. as chet baker says, i fall in love so easily i fall in love so fast. just humming the song in my head makes me wanna fall in love with him but that's beside the point. so yes, i do. no offense to exboyfriends, i fell in love with each one of you for different but perfectly great reasons as you all excel in countless ways. except you. and you know who you are. but when i look back i remember that i thought i could possibly not love anyone more for each and every relationship. i totally kid myself into thinking with each relationship, i reached the top! oh and yes, i was also completely blind to any barriers that would otherwise (to a regular human being) seem insurmountable. because love knows no boundaries, right! yeah right :) and love changes people, no? when you direct a significant amount of your compassion to a single person, it can do wonders! lazy asses like myself, become action-people. you want bubblegum? let me run for a mile to the nearest store. got a backache? let me get the lotion and rub you down for an hour! and the action-loving ones (like myself again, yes i am very versatile) stay glued to the tv to watch the world snooker championships (no not me i swear). hey, it's a beautiful day and my friends are having a bbq, but i'll stay in with the shades down only to cuddle with you! ok ok i know we all sacrifice things for each other but you know we are going with our best sides forward when we are in love. so come on people, agree with me, falling in love is an anomaly, falling in love is a reaction, falling in love is chemical, falling in love is not us, falling in love is not unique, falling in love is crazy! not to say we don't want to experience any of those things...and really i am not writing this to suggest that falling in love is something we should try to avoid, on the contrary, i think it is good to jolt oneself out of the monotony of life, explore our limits as well as others', lose our usual everyday cockiness, determination, selfishness, and forget about our friends and family for a little while. especially knowing that we will get all that back, in due time!
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5 comments:
what if you get addicted to falling in love and not preserving it, my love?
what you describe hon is not love its lust. that passion never lasts for someone. love is whats is left over if you work hard on the relationship when the lust fades away and its much stronger than passion and lust ever will be. i agree with gubilk, if this is yr meaning of love you might be a love addict--NOT HEALTHY!!! understand that real love takes work on yr part, good luck!
i was talking about 'being in love' or 'falling in love' actually and not love itself, whose meaning is very clear to me so i don't need the luck :) as for my love for gubilik i will work at preserving it all my life!
I have read your hyperbolic fb post on marrying your yoga teacher together with this rather Aristotelian blog post on being in love and feel compelled to comment. You point out here what is also said in the Phaedrus, that those in love (eros) are "ready to say and do what will incur the enmity of everyone else, if it pleases the beloved." (231c1-4) Aristotle adds "being in love (eran) with many is an impossibility, for we want that [erotic] love be a sort of excess of friendship (hyperbole gar tis einai bouletai philias) and be toward one person." NE 1171a11-12. All of that is true. Usually we want falling in love to go hand in hand with the overflowing of a friendship, a beautiful beneficent thing. Yet being in love drives us to act badly toward everyone (including ourselves) if we think it will bring us closer to the beloved.
You say so well that, when in love, we go with our best sides forward and yet falling in love is "not us". In love, we strain to keep only one side in the sight of the beloved, just as the moon dancing keeps its good side in the sun. Erotic love is a thing we do but not who we are. And we are not heavenly bodies, but rather animals with jobs, we cannot keep dancing forever. And yet we wonder, Is it possible to learn how to stay in love with a single person? Like learning to do a headstand for a few seconds, then a minute then minutes... Is there such a discipline of erotic love?
i think there is a way but it requires two people internally/independently/subconsciously/consciously(?) making the same decision. out of all the couples i know there is one that stands out, who i felt were genuinely and erotically in love with each other all their lives. you know how they say if you are unhappy and you force yourself to smile it will actually help make you happier? looking from the outside i thought that's what they did. not in a forced way; they just both wanted to be in love with each other, they liked the excitement so they made it exciting. it only worked because they wanted the same thing and their love grew feeding from each other's. i like the headstand analogy, not because i have made it my challenge, but because you fall a lot when you're trying, especially in the beginning. so i'm sure they did too. from the outside it never showed - they had already mastered it - just like my yoga teacher who i can never imagine falling out of his headstand.
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