"The fault, dear Brutus, isn't of your stars,/ but of your hormones."
It's not fate that makes you fall in love, but instead your own hormones. Live with that:)
“For one human being to love another; that’s perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” -Rainer Maria Rilke
The mere act of loving someone more than you love yourself is magical and incomprehensible (which magic is anyway). It’s beyond the comprehension of a person like me who’s deeply pessimistic about human nature and believes that humans are inherently selfish. We don’t strive for it. We can just wake up one day and decide to be selfish; claim our true nature. Ironically, until now, I believe, I have received more kindness than evil. We all are capable of true kindness and humanity although we don’t show or accept it to be a possibility. How can I hold two opposite and contradictory viewpoints? That’s a question better to be left for another day.
Let’s redirect ourselves towards the discussion the theme of which, let me remind you, is love. Although a hopeless romantic, I have always grappled with the following questions- Why do we fall in love? What’s the science or divinity of it? Why do we ‘fall’ in love and not rise in it? How can we love someone more than life when we’re all about ‘I, Me & Myself’ at the end of the day? Why do we love that certain someone? And what makes us not love them anymore?
I tried to find the answers in science, people, and myself. The science presented me with an answer that I’m not satisfied with or rather I don’t want to be satisfied with. It’s because I always imagined love to be otherworldly. Something that isn’t grounded in reality. Leave alone in science. You don’t care about laundry, rent or bills when you’re in love. Life becomes all about clouds, rainbows, sunshine and kisses. This is what I used to believe until a few years back.
But a magical phenomenon like love does have a scientific explanation. Here it goes- Three hormones in your body, namely Oxytocin, Serotonin & Dopamine (collectively called love, feel good, butterfly or happy hormones) are responsible for steering the ship of your love life. Hence, the name love hormones. According to the sources I’ve used, we fall in love with a certain someone because in their presence our glands, namely the Pineal gland and Posterior Pituitary gland, secrete the above-mentioned hormones. Each of these hormones has its forte which, if you want to know more about, you can find on google.
The secretion of these hormones makes us feel good and happy. As a result of which, we begin to associate the presence of that certain someone with this feeling. The more you meet this person, the more you start falling in love with the feeling or sensation you get when you meet them. And it goes without saying that love and happiness are related to each other.
However, let’s take recourse to more personal opinions on the question we’re dealing with. On being asked the reason for falling in love, one of my friends responded with this thoughtful answer:
“Our falling in love with someone is linked to our being in love with ourselves from the time we gain consciousness. We love ourselves so much that the moment we see a reflection of ourselves, our intrinsic values, our ideals, even specks of our habit in another person, something in us clicks. We want to share ourselves with that other person with an equal urge to be discovered and seen. Another reason is our never-dying quest of ‘becoming’ someone with so and so qualities, needless to say, this quest remains unfulfilled because we can never be all we have ever wanted to be, something will always be amiss. Then comes somebody with those very qualities you ever strove to have in your being. Our hearts can’t appreciate those ideals manifest in reality before our own eyes and we subconsciously begin to covet the fulfillment of our ideals in an entity that is outside of our physical body because the spiritual holes and caveats are to be filled up when you’re with that other person.
“Love is analogous to reason, for that it finds itself in other people” I swear by this quote of Hegel because he implicitly points to the fact that love isn’t finding another person. It’s finding ourselves in another person. One who fills up those spiritual caveats and makes you whole.”
Wow!
Another one of my friends replied with an answer that I can really relate with. Below is her response-
“I would fall in love or I fell in love because I can’t survive this life alone. I urge the presence of another soul to make me a whole being.” She added “When it comes to a man, I’m to the conclusion that I’ve never fallen in love. I would never lie that since the beginning of my teenage years, I find myself already fallen in love with the idea of love. If I talk about God, I’m terribly in love with Him. I could never hide this fact from anyone. So, when I consider God as my Beloved, I feel as if I’ve drunk the love. I could define my understanding of love to the world. I feel it as its essence flows through my veins. I don’t know what you might be thinking right now. In the end, without being in love with any man, I’m already in love.”
The answer to the same question by another one of my friends was-
“Love should be unpredictable, unexpected like me. This is what I believe in. It might be difficult to find someone like this.”
Coming to what I believe, I think it’s difficult to answer because of my pessimistic view of human nature and naivete. However, it isn’t impossible.
Other than the fear of being alone, I think that if I ever fall in love (which I’m not sure if I ever will) it’d be because of my fear of death and insignificance. Sooner or later, everything will be gone and so shall I. The sheer knowledge of my mortality encourages me not to live an insignificant life. Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist, believed that human beings, due to their fear of death & consequently of living an insignificant life, associate themselves with immortal concepts like religion, race, nationality, etc. This association gives meaning to our mortal lives and enables us to attach our existence to something eternal. Love, I believe, is one of the few successful ways humans use to transcend themselves and find greater meaning in their lives.
“To become precious — that is the work of love, the task of love, the great reward of love. The recompense of death. The human miracle that makes the transience of life not only bearable but beautiful.” And Maria Popova couldn’t be more right.
When God created us, he would’ve been like- Here you are, the most malicious, greedy, selfish and uncouth animal capable of the greatest sins and evil. Notwithstanding that I’ll make you capable of love, of getting your mere act of loving carved on history books. Of kindness and generosity. You’ll seek explanations for your capacity to love but you won’t find it. Because this is something I’ll bestow you with to survive and sustain yourself on earth. To come back and thank me for. You’ll love and you’ll love yourself for being able to love, for being loved and for loving someone more than yourself. And this will make you believe that you’re not what they made you believe you are. You’ll retrieve the lesson they made you forget.
When your time will be running out, what would you care most about? I’ll leave you to ponder over this question and would be really glad & interested in knowing your answers.