What does it mean to fall in love?

Obsession, addiction.

Contentment.

To find someone you care about more than yourself.

When someone or something touches my empathy.

There is no wrong answer to the question of what it means to fall in love. Worldwide, the idea has been expressed in a wide range of ways with differing interpretations and general disposition toward the experience, and yet without exception this phenomenon happens in every culture and throughout history.

Science often does its level best to strip subjective human experiences down to a strictly utilitarian interpretation, and they interpret the chemistry they associate with the experience to the only possible cause or driving mechanism behind it. In my experience, the forms these experiences take and the information quality and content are not adequately explained by a simple hormonal reaction. What are your thoughts on this, friends?

I would think the experience would be more uniform if this were the case.

The hormones are driven by something other than a physical reaction.

And when they do their testing they must of necessity target only a narrow set or section of the human body, and my definition of body includes the brain. Mind would be separate. Whether you want to see mind as an emergent quality from the complex interaction of physical processes, or as something more metaphysical in nature, the implication is the same. I have heard it said that often when someone writes a story, what they write is not as important as what they imply. The hormones may be the ink that the physical reactions are written in, but the information also must include implied data as well. It is isomorphic in nature.

Something is as much defined by what traits it displays, as what traits are absent from it. Our experience of food included both the idea of what things are not food as what things are food.

What motivation in human behavior has nothing to do with love?

Hunger. We can ignore hunger when experiencing love. When we are falling in love romantically, we experience some degree of loss of appetite from the hormonal reaction alone. But myself, I consider hunger a sensation rather than an emotion. This reasonable as a distinction? What element of human society has nothing to do with love? Patriotism? Piety? Ambition?

Those are love of self, country, god.

Jealousy? Jealousy is love twisted.

Why do we “fall in love”? Do we choose to?

It directs our focus? Gives meaning?

For me, it is when something stirs a maternal instinct in me, some person, animal or idea to nurture and help grow.

Love is a deep seated element of the human psyche, and arguably of every species on this planet. We, in our every waking moment, consider things first and last based on how they make us feel. They are basing even a great deal of “technology” on that very discovery. Predictive software for tracking the behavior of the stock market. They are even tracking various complex processes in the brain, and even our most complex thoughts are preceded by a feeling, an emotional reaction, even before we are aware we have made a judgement of any kind, even before our perception has made any intelligible sense of what we have experienced.

Yes, I’ve heard that we’re motivated by emotion even when we think we’re logical. There is no such thing as a self-made man, no such thing as self-made humanity. Humanity, even from the organic level, is more an emergence of principles and natural forces than an artificial construct. This reasonable to say?

One of the principles being love, we fall in love because love is written into the very essence of our being, operating independently of our thoughts or judgements regarding it.

As they say, you can’t choose who you love? Not arbitrarily, no. In a way you can, but only indirectly. Because through your personal growth and experiences you can choose who you are.

They say opposites attract. That’s a half-truth if even that. Novelty has some attraction to it, but in the end love expresses itself through affinity. We only truly love those we affiliate with.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~