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Who are you? Who am I? | Week 9

March | Love and Relationships | Week 9 | 3/5/2023
Explain what it feels like to fall in love 

I have known the soul-satisfying, vigorous embrace of love twice in my life. I've spent years, rooted to this Earth by the intoxicating belongingness of it's gravity. I've witnessed the infinite waterfall, seen and felt the intensity with which it unendingly bellows. I have fallen in love. And as part of the journey of finding love, I've been brushed by ephemeral vibrations of a feeling so close, yet so lacking, half a dozen times more. Like photons passing through me - ungraspable and therefore unsatiating - those near misses are dichotomized by enchantment and despair. 

The search for love is ubiquitous and universal. It is the oldest and most fundamental building block of our sociology. It staves off death. It quells existential angst. It is indefatigable. It is the search for the Fountain of Youth, the Riches of the Flor de Mar. It is the religious instinct. It is Romeo and Juliet, Odysseus and Penelope, Cleopatra and Mark Antony. It is Dante's Inferno. It is the omnipresent force of nature existent in the quiet desperation of 8 billion souls destined to struggle towards its acquisition.    

Love is poetic and profound. It feels like discovering an alternate dimension, all around you and within you, but unbeknownst to you. You step into this pocket universe and there, suddenly, you're capable of looking at the state of your original universe, with a vantage point previously unavailable. This person, whom you barely know, grants you the capability, a gift and a curse, to examine yourself, your life, and and the realm of possibility within you. Their eyes are mirrors into your own soul. And love is the gift of stepping through that mirror, traveling into your soul, and returning back to the present, with a connection to life that is restorative, novel, and exciting.

Falling in love feels unequivocal, otherwise it wouldn't be falling in love. Ask anyone who has ever fallen in love and they will say the same thing - 'you know once you've felt it'. The magnitude with which it differs from affection, endearment, or care. Rarely in life do we get to feel something unequivocal. I have been 120 mph on a motorcycle, I've jumped out of a plane, ridden rollercoasters and snowboarded black diamonds. Adrenaline is adrenaline. I've been to Buenos Aires, Sydney, Rome, London and New York City. Novelty is novelty. While the magnitudes of these experiences may differ incrementally, the experiences are largely the same. Falling in love is in a category of it's own. It has no experiential comparison, and this realization is made available to you almost instantly. 

When you fall in love, it makes little sense. The emotions that take hold in your consciousness are foreign. Even the most confident person will find it hard to comprehend, because love makes you question your own competence and your own self-worth. It makes you wonder why this person, who's very presence makes your heart ache and your hands tremble, wants to be in your embrace. Is it a mistake? Is it destiny? Why me? Love objects to preconceived notions, destroys rationality and logic. It may even open the doorway for the belief that the universe has a grand design.

Bukowski said, "I will remember the kisses, our lips raw with love, and how you gave me everything you had, and how I offered you what was left of me." To me, this is what falling in love means. A simple kiss is a gift when you are in love. And one never forgets someone they've been in love with. It is the strongest core memory one can obtain, vivid and visceral. And it is the most powerful purpose one can be granted in this life. It is the top of the hierarchy, and one never imagines that they reach the top, which is why we do not enter into love, or walk into love. It happens to us, not by us. Which is why we must fall.

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