The feeling of falling in love

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The ability to fall in love makes us human.


It is a complex feeling, the interplay of hormones and the perfect poise of rationality and the irrational, sitting just beyond our understanding - only just!

And, therefore, it's hard to explain. We try poor explanations too often: Something to be, something to possess. And, yet, at the core, this is to give, give away, care for something, or someone, other than ourselves - making us greater than we really are.

This feeling sustains our most intimate bonds, nations, humanity, but we neither understand nor control it. And that's perhaps for the better: If we knew where the kill switch was, we would have killed it a long time ago.

Contra Darwin, falling in love perhaps serves no evolutionary purpose. At its core, it is about giving away, working against the selfish gene, just enough to keep it in check.

However, this gives us poetry, art and all what is beautiful and non-essential in our language. The creative impulse wouldn't exist if we didn't know how to fall in love. In fact, there is no greater slander than telling someone that he - or indeed she - is incapable of falling in love. 

But is there such a person who can't fall in love? That would be impossible if love is an essential human feeling! However, civilisation intervenes, with all the narcissistic self-importance that we always carry: That we are in control, we are the keeper of the morals, we are in charge of our lives and our responsibilities. There are those who can't let go: Their heart is all too heavy to bear.

My flight is about to land, metaphorically and literally. Back to regular life, back to land - to a rainy Sydney! But let the thought remain, frozen in time - that there was once love that would forever be.


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