Things that happen when love happens

I think there are some important things worth considering when one is or falls in love. There is, firstly, an insurmountable desire, an intense longing, the need to sate a primal drive. This, I would say, is the "lesser" form of love. This is not lesser as in worth less; this lesser should be taken to mean low-level, basic, fundamental. This need is essentially the core neurobiological aspect of love. And it is indeed a need because lesser love, in its most basic form, is the basis of all human relationships, of all human affinities. It is social, it is sexual, it is physical and it is chemical.

But there is something else that happens when love happens. Something that does not happen to all those who think or know or feel themselves in love. This other aspect is a psychic binding between two beings. This is the greater form of love. It is, I think, very much a rarer level of attachment that is not usually reached in a love affair. What are its characteristics? Well, first and foremost it requires little impetus once it is engendered, but necessitates a fierce commitment to be attained. But paradoxically, this commitment is not replete with force or drive. Rather, it has a kinetic energy behind it. That is, there is tremendous potential impetus behind this transition into "greater" love, but its force is never overtly demonstrated. The ascent to this kind of love is almost like a conceding in the face of a much stronger, much more powerful adversary, one that does not need to utilise their unmatched weaponry. It is love achieved through superior, yet unused, firepower.

Secondly, this binding leads to complete devotion, such that is, arguably, wholly irrational. This devotion is effectively a wilful relinquishing of one's well-being for another. Now, I do not mean that one actively disregards one's well-being; I simply mean that one would wilfully supplant one's own well-being with another's. And this is irrational as self-preservation (and, therefore, well-being of self) is the prime mandate of living beings. Therefore, we can say that higher love, true love, is beyond the natural order of life, beyond the in-woven reason that directs (for the most part) higher awareness and volition. This rare, exquisite love is, I would argue, a step toward a greater form of being. It is a transcending into the next echelon of reality.

M.M. — 24-May-2015