Why people fall in love?
“Are you in love?”
“Well, who isn’t?”
You wake up everyday knowing pretty much how your day is bound to be like. You are in 2017 and life has grown incredibly hectic. Regardless, every now and then, you ask yourself what is going on. What are you doing with yourself? Etc. A series of uncomfortable questions follows. No spoilers there. And before you realize it, you’ve stopped asking yourself anything anymore. You are comfortably tuned in to the world you chose to inhabit. No more hard-hitting doubts. No more peeping-in-the-mirror to seek your true self. You’ve convinced yourself you’re not responsible for the hapless state the world is in and more importantly, you’ve made a pact with yourself that it’s always going to be alright at the very end. Decidedly so, more candy floss and less grey clouds — please!
To that effect, there’s an evident shallowness in your existence but you overlook it. Why? Because it’s more convenient this way. Defense mechanism, if you may. It’s not your fault though. A pure case of cause and effect. The material aspect of your being has gnawed into your sublime nature. You are chasing things you don’t really want. And even if you do, it’s because others have programmed you to. Following the footsteps of somebody else without losing your individuality is tough, isn’t it? To make it up, you throw heavy words — growth, career, security, tomorrow — all around lest you have to face an alternate reality. You are tired of this facade and yet you continue to play along. Again, it’s not your fault.
However, it would certainly be your fault if you didn’t even attempt to escape this arrogant cage. And that’s the part where love enters the scene like a saviour. When you were in school or college, irrespective of how you fared in the academics, you must have fallen for a fellow student. Inside your head, you’d already built an amateur version of a home with that person. Actively supported by romantic movies and novels and the never-ending musicals, you even thought to yourself that you’re fully capable of falling in love although you wouldn’t have been able to describe what those feelings meant. If you were to be interrogated, you’d have been tongue-tied and more clueless than a fork in a bowl of soup. Of course, none of it matters now. You were young and foolish.
Fast-forward a decade or two and here you are, away from the innocence of not knowing what could be at stake. Your so-called mature self falls in love today not because there’s nothing better to do but because you understand something about the world you live in. There’s no closure here. Almost every little thing you do or desire is part of a much greater design; a design you won’t be able to decode in your relatively short lifetime. To put it bluntly, we are stuck in a huge maze. And we earn our respite only during those brief moments of being in love with someone or something. Besides, those moments don’t come with a sheet of terms and conditions. They are fleeting and ridiculous and gorgeous. No wonder you grab them with all you can and hold on them for as long as possible.
Fair enough.
All this while, you’ve been searching for a calm in yourself only to somehow find it in another human being. For a change, life appears boundless and full of joy. Being in love seems magical indeed. Let’s not talk about the natural chemicals in your system and ruin the ongoing plot. For better or for worst, it’s amazing how mysterious love is. You could barely look after yourself and all of a sudden, you vow to take care of the other person too. Power of one becomes strength of two. It’s also at this juncture you come face to face with the meaning of life itself. Heavier words like selflessness, courage, unity and real take over. You don’t care about soul mates now, do you? You are too wise for that crap. You’ve found somebody who adds value to your presence in the grand scheme of things. What happens next is a question of chance. You may be together to make fun of each other’s wrinkled ass. You may break up before the next winter. Who knows? What’s more important to you, at that point of falling in love, is the endless possibilities of escaping the cage. And that’s worth giving a shot.
[This piece was originally written for Bonobology by yours randomly.]
