The Greatest Invention of All Time: True Love 

Dissecting the phenomenon that society worships and movies perpetuate. 

I recently watched The Adjustment Bureau (2011, directed by George Nolfi and starring Matt Damon & Emily Blunt).For those of you who haven’t seen it, the Letterboxd summary is as follows:

A man glimpses the future Fate has planned for him — and chooses to fight for his own destiny. Battling the powerful Adjustment Bureau across, under and through the streets of New York, he risks his destined greatness to be with the only woman he’s ever loved.

I’m going to go a step further and spoil a bit of the movie here.

Members of the Adjustment Bureau are the Chairman—implied as god—’s employees. They’re the ones who make sure lives are carrying on according to The Plan, and everything happens according to Plan. It can be written and rewritten but nothing occurs without being directly proportional to what it spells out. Protagonists David and Elise, in previous versions of the Plan, were meant to be together. A recent revision, however, changed their relationship so that they were no longer together. But because they had so much history (or rather, a projected future) the chemistry between them was tangible. David decides to fight the establishment and stay with Elise, no matter what it takes. In the end, the Chairman is so taken with David’s determination that he rewrites their plan so the two can live happily ever after. True love and free will conquers all!

I had two problems with this ending. First of all, if David and Elise only had great chemistry because they were previously meant to be together, then this isn’t love at all; it’s predestination. Second, the two are allowed to live happily ever after because the Chairman decides to be merciful and rewrite their plan. There is no free will involved.

That got me thinking. Given everything in the previous paragraph, true love and free will cannot coexist because true love implies that it was meant to be. If it was meant to be, then it wasn’t a conscious decision. There was no choice involved; it happened because it was supposed to happen. People often say that being in love is an indescribable feeling. It’s difficult, even, to define love in and of itself. A world where true love exists means a world where we have no control over what happens in our lives, a world where everything is already written out in a blueprint. This world, then, because people are falling in love every day and one does not simply choose to fall in love.

Or so we think.

The human brain is one of the most complex and flawed creations of the universe. At the same time scientists are figuring out how to establish permanent settlement on Mars, humans are experiencing cognitive dissonance and warping reality. So much of what is perceived and real is only so because that’s what our brain tells us. We can effectively convince ourselves of a lot of things by taking advantage of this neurological hiccup.

Like so: During my second year of high school I felt that I really shouldn’t dislike writing under pressure if I was going to do it so often, so I thought happy thoughts whenever my English teacher assigned timed writings. I got so good at convincing myself that by the time junior year rolled around, I actually rejoiced the onslaught of timed essays. That confidence I gained then carries the way I perceive research papers and readings as a history major; the way and the rate at which I synthesize information and crank it out is absurd. But I like to write. I told myself that sophomore year, I got around to believing it, and I never stopped believing it—The cycle worked in my favor. Maybe practice makes perfect. Maybe I got lucky. But that’s a rather large tide turning for someone who’s never been a strong writer; prior to sophomore year I consistently produced mediocre papers because I did not like to write. I am by no means a gifted writer, but now I like to do it, I will do it, and I will do it well enough to keep on trucking.

That is the power of the human mind. It can move mountains and it can change history.

It’s as if my brain has a mind of its own.

But an almost subconscious way I condition myself is when I think I like someone. It starts off benign: I develop an interest. But then I tell a friend, and, at the very moment I say “I think I like x because y,” it becomes a tiny bit more true. Even though my diction indicates uncertainty, the fact that I’m telling someone about solidifies the squiggly ambivalence that only I’ve experienced. Now two people share this thought. Soon enough, not only am I still thinking the same thought, but other people are also telling it to me as well. And if my friends are talking to me about it, well, then it must be true. Never mind that I am the source of this information.

Repeat something enough times, tell enough people, it becomes fact. Truth by repetition.

When people believe collectively, it becomes religion, dogma, belief; call it what you will. Whatever pleasure or reality principles you believe in, it’s something that others believe as well so you take it as fact. One plus one equals two, not eleven, because all your teachers told you so, and I before E except after C is a rule because it rhymes and that’s why believe and conceive are spelled the way they are. What if true love is just a pleasure principle humans invented and solidified as fact by society? Do we love only because we love with the idea of being in love or because it’s meant to be? There are enough Disney fairytales and romantic comedies to suggest that and marriage is highly sought after. Stereotypes about single and widowed women only perpetuate the communal desire to find love. Is our divorce rate so high because people realize after the fact that they were just trying to do what seemed to be the correct thing to do? Then when things don’t work out it’s frustrating because love is supposed to mean happily ever after, til death do us part. If it were meant to be, if love were real, it would have worked out. You can’t fall out of sync with your soulmate a couple years down the line; love is forever. But if you’re looking for love, if you’re looking for that ideal, your mind can make a square peg fit a round hole. The human brain is capable of convincing me that I’m in love and I’ll buy into that because that’s what I’m supposed to do, in this day and age. It’s labeled love when everything “fits” the description that society dictated.

Here’s another idea: I’ve heard that people are drawn to those with similar facial features and, while this may or may not be true, I definitely know couples who look like each other—Kind of like pet-owner look alikes, but they interact with you and say things. Is the one true love just love of yourself? After all, you’re looking to be loved for who you are, nothing more, nothing less. Isn’t that then validation of your self-worth and existence as a human being?

There is no such thing as love.

This is a lot to take in. I’m should establish right now that I love my family and friends—the love I’m talking about refers to the emotion two people purport to feel for each other and the notion of “the one” as the driving force behind marriage.

Surprisingly enough, I am not single. But hear me out.

Continuing on. Rationally speaking (and I know humans are irrational but let’s throw some economics into this so it’s more of a thought experiment), if humans are rational and think at the margin, what is the opportunity cost of being in love? There’s a huge trade-off between potentially becoming a better person and having another person’s life to worry about. And let’s be real, it’s hard enough managing our own lives. Who would voluntarily take on the burden of someone else’s crap? Well love makes you do crazy things what the fuck is love anyway because honestly, what biological purpose does it serve? Technically speaking, love is not necessary in the equation for producing a fetus.

But does love ensure that babies are born? Fear is the most primitive emotion because it is directly proportional to survival. But fear is a selfish singularity in that it only ensures my survival. Is love wired into our systems to ensure the survival of humankind and not just ourselves? Perhaps it’s also a chemical construction as well as a biological one: The pheromones of two people creating some sort of tension that is palpable but unexplainable. Maybe that’s why two people can have chemistry. If or when the chemical reaction fizzles out, divorce happens. There’s always some sort of stigma attached to separation. This all might be a part of natural selection and survival of the fittest—the alphas of the world remain married and have babies that grow up in wholesome families, thereby creating a healthy feedback loop. In this line of thought, we’re just cogs in this machine of a world with actions that have already been predetermined.Both notions exclude the possibility of choice because there is no room to factor it in.

So now there’s no such thing as free will.

Marriage and birth, however, were once the biggest swords monarchs wielded, never mind love. That’s a new-fangled idea that’s only been around for a couple centuries, nothing compared to the empires that were built on strategic, loveless marriages. History seems to indicate that love isn’t a biological construct to keep humans alive and kicking. After all, look at where we are today.

Look at where we are today. I cannot begin to try and understand what the Philippines is going through right now; how Syria is still plagued by a civil war; why sex trafficking is still so prominent in the world. But I know how I felt when my friend passed away and I could not stop myself from feeling what I did, from wondering why it happened the way it happened. Things happen because there will always be factors out of our control. If I cannot extend my hand and stop a meteor from crashing into earth, then what will do I have? The world will spin regardless of my volition because that’s what it’s supposed to do. I cannot attribute that to either a higher power or random forces in the universe because I don’t know. Things happen. And such is life.