It’s a funny phrase isn’t it. We say that we fall in love like it was an open manhole cover on our way to work. Like we have nothing to do with it, like it is completely out of our control. We seem to think that love over powers us and strong-arms us into submission and then we free-fall into this madness we call love.
There is of course more to it than this. First of all there is the biology. Our bodies are attracted to other bodies that will make healthy babies and perpetuate the species. My friend Andrew Barnes recently told me that one of the factors is our immune system, we naturally get attracted to people who have the largest divergence from our own immune system and advocated that maybe we should enter a bar saying: Hey my immune system really digs your immune system, wanna hook-up?
But a physical attraction, though often mistaken for love, is not love. It is infatuation or physical attraction. Love is a different thing it originates from within and is more about me than the other. The thing about love though is that it is all up to me, I love another when I choose to open up for love to flow in both directions, in and out. It is when I believe I am lovable that I can open up and receive love, it is also only then that I can truly give love.
So maybe we need to rethink our language, maybe we don’t fall in love. Maybe, as my love told me, we don’t fall in love but rise in love. At least this communicates intention and choice, it is also a more poetic picture, to rise together in love rather than falling helplessly into something.
Let’s all rise together in love!
