Love is fleeting, love is blind, love is eternal, and there is no end to the idioms that love entails, let’s not forget it makes one an idiot first of all. An idiot who is also delusional and out of touch with reality, but then how real is reality anyway. We all want to be loved, to be made feel special but then in terms of love the giver alone benefits and not the giveth. Now that is a fact that if you know, you know. Ask Ullysees, who loved Helen of Troy, he would tell you. Ever wondered why the heart shape is shaped in such? The shape of the heart shape comes from the now-extinct plant called silphium, which was the crucial component in the love potion. Also a fun fact is that love and other emotions are regulated by the brain while the organ heart is simply a pump that goes fast or slow as directed by the brain. And while the heart’s motion we are aware of, we really don’t know what happens in our brain. For the brain is where all the magic actually happens.
Love is in fact a deep connection, that then makes one feel care and understanding, a connection that we yearn for and a connection that speaks to us. Do what you love they say and you’ll never work for a day in your life. If one then does feel the connection to their work then it essentially does not feel like work, or if someone cares about their work. The connection and a sense of care are what keeps one going. I love doing yoga, bending my body into the shape of a pretzel, breathing deeply and that sense of gladdening appeal would also wake me up at the crack of dawn. Didn’t they say that love can make you do crazy things! Well, that said some people operate on a crazy sense of righteousness and do crazy things too like waking up at the crack of dawn. Then again do we choose what we love? While a lot of people would argue that love is a choice, just like happiness is a choice, love and happiness as with other things stem from a multitude of factors that mostly depend on you as a person and the sense of connection you’d feel to something. Just like every person is different and hence every love is different. The reason we love we cannot say or pinpoint to, nor can we make someone fall in love with us, that is simply not possible by intent. In a world where one can manifest anything, let’s certainly not do that with love, for this one emotion works best when it is unadulteratedly real. But then sometimes, something catches your eye, then has your heart, then blows you off and captures your senses, whether its a rose or the latest software, the stroke of a brush or the smell of paint, or the whiff of fabric or the run of a cake, more likely the smile of a face or the make of the wit, and when that happens becoming hopelessly in love happens and hold on to that feeling.
But then the most important thing about love is to love, whatever the type of love, that love actually benefits because in holding on to a loving feeling or a sense of love one undergoes the following physiological changes. Specific areas in the brain are activated in love, the limbic and reward centers, since the limbic system is about emotion and memory, these are strong when related to love. There is also an increase in dopamine and noradrenaline, these cause butterflies in the stomach, and at the same time, negative thinking and judgment are vastly reduced. We do not judge what we love. And to be in a state of non-judgment is to be living your best life. Love happens in the brain and floods the entire system allowing us to perceive life without red flags and with rose-tinted glasses. We do not choose who we love or what we love, that is not a matter of choice, yet we simply love. Even in the case of self-love, it is not a matter of choice, we cannot choose to love ourselves, we just simply love ourselves or we don’t. Have you seen a person who loves themselves, right not the next-door narcissist whose self-love is marked by blinders, but someone who genuinely loves themselves? They don’t wake up and choose to love themselves, they just do and lucky are they if they do, that would just mean that their brain approves of them, and what a wonderful way it is to be in sync with the self, vibing with the self. Again it is not a forced upon state, it just is a state. Loving someone or something is truly random, something or someone doesn’t have to be the best for one to feel a deep sense of connection, it just has to be the random choosing of the brain that clicks or simply vibes for one reason or none.
By all means love the dog, the self, the gym, or the neighbor! The thing about love is that it makes one the best version of themselves, and that is its redeeming factor. We may not choose what we love but let’s cherish what we love, for though it may be random, yet it is doing a whole lot of good in your body, and good is great. People in love have dopamine-rich centers in the brain according to a Harvard Medical Study and this love can last forever too if it does. And these feelings of reward in the brain, literally reward the brain, which then works with a better sense of perception facilitating positive feelings in general. If one can turn one’s attention to the things one loves, everything else may simply fall over on the wayside, requiring no care or bother. Love might be nature’s best chemical cocktail though it continues to elude science and entice us!
❤
Vedasri Siddamsetty 