Why We Fall In Love- A Philosophical Approach.

Before you begin to read this post, I need to tell you that this post has been written by my best friend, Kriti, who is an amazing writer. She runs the blog ‘Kittu’s Modern Mixtape‘, which has more of her amazing work. So go check that out, as well! Kriti very kindly agreed to step in for me today because I’ve been extremely busy in the last couple of days, and she has written you all a very beautiful and thought-provoking piece that I hope you all enjoy as much as I did when I read it.

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Goodness, romantic love! Wonderful and thrilling, unfortunate and nerve-wrecking; sometimes you feel these emotions simultaneously. Sometimes you are up in the seventh heaven, sometimes you’re in misery, on the floor eating a pint of ice cream thinking about it.

For what reason do we decide to put ourselves through its emotional wringer? Does love make our lives meaningful, or is it an escape from our loneliness and suffering? Is love a mask for our sexual craving, or a stunt of science to cause us to reproduce? Is it all we require? Do we need it by any stretch of the imagination?

In the event that sentimental love has a reason, neither science nor brain research has found it yet.

But throughout history, some of our most well known philosophers have put forward some intriguing theories.

“Love makes us whole, again”— philosopher Plato explored the idea that we love in order to become complete.

In his “Symposium”, he wrote about a dinner party, at which Aristophanes, a comic playwright, regales the guests with the following story:

“Humans were once creatures with four arms, four legs, and two faces.

One day, they angered the gods, and Zeus sliced them all in two. Since then, every person has been missing half of him or herself. Love is the longing to find a soulmate, who’ll make us feel whole again” — Or at least, that’s what Plato believed a drunken comedian would say at a party.

“Love tricks us into having babies.”— Much, much later, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer stated that we love on the grounds of our longings, in hopes that someone else will satisfy us, however, it’s all an illusion. Nature is fooling us into multiplying our species, we feel the romance only so we are tricked into reproducing more and more. At the point when our sexual cravings are fulfilled, we are tossed back into our tortured presences, and we succeed just in keeping up the species and propagating the pattern of human drudgery.

(Sounds to me like somebody needs a hug).

“Love is escape from our loneliness.”— According to the Nobel Prize-winning British philosopher Bertrand Russell, we love to extinguish our physical and mental longings. People are intended to reproduce, however without the delight of enthusiastic love, sex is uninspiring. Our dread of the chilly, unfeeling world entices us to construct hard shells to ensure and disengage ourselves — but we need some kind of companionship, else we will spiral in mental dread for life. Love’s joy, closeness, and warmth causes us to beat our dread of the world, get away from our desolate shells, and connect all the more plentifully throughout everyday life. Love improves our entire being, making it the best thing throughout everyday life.

“Love is a misleading affliction.”— Siddhartha Gautama, who became known as the Buddha, probably would have had some interesting arguments with Russell. Buddha proposed that we love since we are attempting to fulfill our base longings. However, these yearnings are deformities, and connections, it will lead you to nothing but life of misery. Fortunately, Buddha found the eight-fold path, kind of like a program for quenching the flames of want with the goal that we can attain Nirvana, which is an illuminated condition of harmony, clearness, intelligence, and empathy.

The novelist Cao Xueqin illustrated this Buddhist sentiment that romantic love is evident in one of China’s greatest classical novels, “Dream of the Red Chamber.” In a subplot, Jia Rui falls in love with Xi-feng who tricks and humiliates him. Conflicting emotions of love and hate tear him apart. Later, a Taoist gives him a magic mirror that can cure him as long as he doesn’t look at the front of it. But of course, he looks at the front of it. He sees Xi-feng. His soul enters the mirror and he is dragged away in iron chains to die.

Yikes!

However not all Buddhists think this way about sentimental and romantic love, but the moral of this story is that such attachments spell tragedy, and should, along with magic mirrors, be avoided.

“Love lets us reach beyond ourselves.”— French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir proposed that love is the craving to coordinate with another and that it mixes our lives with importance. Be that as it may, she was less worried about why we love and more keen on how we can love better. She saw that the issue with conventional sentimental love – that it very well may be enthralling to such an extent, that we are enticed to make it our ONLY purpose for existing.

Yet, dependence on another to justify our existence easily leads to boredom and power games. To avoid this trap, Beauvoir prompted love more legitimately and authentically, which is more similar to an extraordinary kinship — or something blooming out of a deep friendship if I rephrase. Two people uphold each other in finding themselves, overcoming their conflicts together, and improving their lives and the world together.

Recently, I’ve been taking a deep dive in the concept of different philosophers and their views about relationships and meaning of life. It was pretty interesting to share some of it with you guys. What do you think you resonate with — or, how do you view ‘falling in love’ as? I think this is something you might want to ask yourself today.

Although we might never know why we fall in love, we can be certain that it will be a mixed bag of everything. It’s unnerving and invigorating. It puts us in misery and makes our heart take off. Perhaps, we lose ourselves. Or maybe discover ourselves. It very well may be terrible, or it may very well be the best part about our life. Will you dare to find out?

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If you liked this post, make sure you go check out Kriti’s blog ‘Kittu’s Modern Mixtape’ for more of her work! I hope you’re all having a great day and I hope you enjoyed reading this wonderfully researched post as much as I did!

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Featured Image by David Dvořáček on Unsplash