I am no romantic. I reject the naive view that there is one person out there for everyone, as if for every human being there exists exactly one correspondent soul-mate or kindred spirit. But moreover, I also reject the view that there is some set of soul-mates or kindred spirits. We would like to think of our mates as Prince(ss) Chramings who are out there, in some distant corner of the world, waiting for us to discover them. The fact is, we become attracted to the people around simply by virtue of the fact that they are around us, that is, because they are in roughly the same proximity to us in space and time. Love is a phenomenon within us, which is, now and again, triggered by some stimulus. The root of this phenomenon is nothing deeper than natural selection. We are attracted and fall in love with the people around us because close spatio-temporal proximity is necessary for sexual reproduction. Love and eventual co-habitation are consequences of habit. We love and live with other people simply because we are used to having them around. Love grows as the force of habit becomes more binding. I can understand how one might find this a little depressing. But look on the bright side. If you have ever lost a lover, don't worry! You will love again!
You'll make a fine clinical psychologist someday. But let's go deeper... You have dismissed the spiritual nature in people. The mind is only an information processing center. It gathers data, sifts it, and spits out a decision based on that. It lives in a world of positives and negatives. True love is something that is all encompassing. It blankets everything equally. It does so because love comes not from the mind but the heart. The heart is outside of the mind. It is the true seat of consciousness, and it is not bound by limitations that plague the mind. It is all seeing. It is your true self. The reason the heart sees love everywhere is the realization that it's all you. You've created the world around you that you think you live in. You've fallen asleep inside this creation and now believe it to be real. The mind stands in the way of you waking up this reality. Once you have learned to move it aside, you'll see what's behind it all. You. x
xexon - there's truth in what you say, but in terms of human relations 'love' is understood differently than in the purely spiritual sense. In effect, sexual love is what is on the agenda here, and that is far from all-embracing or un-conditional or equal to all. I'd say that it is a result of a number of factors - there has to be obviusly some physical attraction, and in all likelyhood that's under the control of subtle chemical factors and so on. Probably, there's a range of possible types and therefore possible mates for each person. Really, it's a game being played on us by our biological nature. There's also cultural factors at play, and even such banal consideratons as wealth etc. Behind it all is the imperative drive for the continuation of the human speices. On the spiritual side - I think that if you realize the spiritual love you are talking about you'd probably loose interest to a great extent in the idea of romantic or sexual love as people usually think of it in the ordinary consciousness. Or at least you see that it is just a game one is free to play or not.
Could be Who knows? There’s something’ due any day I will know right away Soon as it shows. It may come cannonballin’ Down through the sky Gleam in its eye Bright as a rose Who knows?
I think with around 6 BILLION people on this earth (a number I cannot even fully comprehend), I dont think it would be a stretch to say that there could be someone for everyone.
BillBlack's right. Perhaps I should have been more specific and titled this post "erotic love." There are many kinds of love: Platonic love, puppy love, brotherly love. But erotic love seems to be at the root of them all. Bill is right to bring up physical attraction. But my point is that close proximity in space and time will, generally, cause physical attraction. We often become attracted to people over time, who we wouldn't give a second look to, immediately upon meeting them. Often, this is attributed to getting to know a person. There is, of course, some truth to this. But, more often than not, our knowledge of other people is shallow, if not outright false. Our minds project idealizations on to the characters of the people we love. ("Absence makes the heart grow fonder.") The root of this is, of course, something of an evolutionary trick or illusion, aimed at procreation. It is precisely because spatio-temporal proximity is essential to procreation that makes space and time so important to love. More later, hopefully.
I agree that a lot of projection goes on - I've been through that personally. I mean projecting the qualities one wants onto another person who doesn't necessarily posess them. Seeing in someone what one wants to see, not what is really there. Probably your right too that proximity to someone can lead to attraction that isn't there at a first meeting. I wonder how this all works out in the case of arranged marriages - is it possible that could lead to love eventually because of this simple fact of proximity?
Haven't we all? I used to think it was just a bad excuse when someone tells a lover that she "loves the idea" of him. But it can be true, and there is often something to our folk-psychological expressions. Perhaps. It would certainly go a long way towards explaining how such an institution could have been perpetuated for so many centuries.
