One of the few things in life that is not subject to either the economic crisis or the vagaries of the weather is love. It colors life with bright colors on clear days and warms on rainy days. Many different words are said about this phenomenon, not even all of which can be printed …
And there is no agreement between people (often between Him and Her, but not only) what to call the word “love” in general. People have been arguing about the mysteries of life and death for thousands of years, but in any case they agree with each other on what is the subject of conversation. Otherwise, with love – here we just don’t always know what the argument is about. Does it exist at all, or is it something mystical, like fate, transmigration of souls, or a national idea?
Love relationships begin and take us to another world only if we are not afraid to learn something new about ourselves.
Often, gravity is taken as the essence of love, interpersonal gravity, which “accidentally descends”, to which “all ages are submissive”, which is evil … In its most intense forms, this is passion, an abyss, madness. No wonder lovers were often compared with obsessed, and love was considered as a form of mental illness … The similarity is that a person becomes insane, does not control himself, does not answer for himself – is clearly unhealthy. He does not control his own actions, but some irresistible force, attraction – that which attracts, drags against his will. (The word “hobby”, by the way, is of the same root – attraction, only smaller.)
Attraction and arousal are mechanisms inherent in us by nature itself, the mechanisms of sexuality and affection. Both are vital not only for procreation, but also for the survival and well-being of each of us. But this is the least secret and there is no freedom at all – the wonderful writer Milan Kundera called sexual arousal a mechanism that the Creator plays with. On the contrary, love is the means by which we elude our Creator*. We do not obey the orders of our hormones and sensory impressions, but we do not suppress them either.
We enter into a dialogue – both with our body, its involuntary aspirations, and with another person, with his desire. As the philosopher Mikhail Epstein noted, human erotica differs from animal sexuality in that I don’t just want to possess another person – I want him to desire me**. And like any dialogue, love relationships are unpredictable; they begin where the involuntary reactions of arousal end, and lead us into another world – if we are not afraid of the unknown and are not afraid to learn something new about ourselves. The scale of love is commensurate with the scale of the personality, and at the same time, love opens up new heights for the personality, to which it has a chance to rise.
Love is not a force that controls us. This is a challenge: if we accept it, we will get more, the more we can invest.
* M. Kundera “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” Amphora, 2001.
** M. Epstein “Space_sign. On the future of the humanities”. UFO, 2004.