Love... and Velociraptors

Okay, so this is my second blog entry, and this time I'm going to be talking about love. It's actually a very important topic to me. Of all the things I want out of my life, true love ranks at the very top of the list. And I have been in love before, though I'm not quite sure how many times. Once for sure. It was too wonderful and painful to have been anything else. Possibly twice. And soon maybe thrice, if my current mixed-up feelings get straightened out and continue to grow. But as might be deduced from the words "possibly," "maybe," and "mixed-up," I can't claim to understand love. What is it? How does it start? Why does it end (or does it?)? And why does it have the power to both illuminate and ruin our lives? Here are some random ideas.

According to Joseph Campbell (author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth), our modern conception of "true love" as an immaterial bond between two people is relatively recent in origin, dating back only as far as the Middle Ages. However, Plato's Symposium was written nearly 2,000 years earlier, circa 385 BCE, and deals with the subject of romantic love in much detail. In it, the poet Aristophanes proposes that human beings were originally created as eight-limbed, two-headed beings, whose massive strength and intelligence eventually allowed them to make war on the gods. As punishment, Zeus split them each in two, cursing them to wander forever in pursuit of their other half*. This, says Aristophanes, is why people claim to feel "whole" when they're in love.

*Interestingly, he also explains homosexuality in this way; that although most humans were hermaphroditic prior to division, some had only male or only female body parts, and so their other half today is of the same sex as themselves.

Although the image of humans with eight limbs and two heads is rather ridiculous, at the symbolic level I find this story very resonant. Perhaps Aristophanes was partially right, and when we search for a soul-mate who'll "complete" us, we're really searching for the other half of our once-undivided soul.

While considering love as a means of restoring spiritual unity, it might be worth consulting the Hindu Upanishads. Dating back several hundred years earlier, they contain an interesting statement that "it is not for the love of a husband that a husband is dear; it is for the love of the self that a husband is dear. It is not for the love of a wife that a wife is dear; it is for the love of the self that a wife is dear" (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 4:6). When understood in its proper context, it describes the belief that at its most basic level, the personal soul (atman) is one with the impersonal and supreme God (Brahman), and that all beings are ultimately one. Love, then, is simply a recognition of your own oneness with another person, and might be considered a form of partial enlightenment. Note "partial;" by this reasoning, love between just two people is incomplete, as perfect enlightenment requires recognizing your oneness with everyone.* Although logical, this doesn't feel right to me, as it seems to destroy the uniqueness of romantic love.

*Within Roman Catholicism, one might see a parallel in the requirement of priests to be celibate. As per the Dharmic religions, enlightenment requires that one be equally at-one with all beings; similarly, priests are supposed to act as agents of God on Earth, and are thus expected to love all of their flock equally, without having favorites. Romantic love, of course, is a form of favoritism.

Of course, within Hinduism (and Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism as well) one could appeal to dharma, or destiny, to explain the importance of romantic love, at least in the lives of certain people. In the great epic Mahabharata, for instance, a woman named Draupadi is granted a boon by the god Shiva, and wishes for a husband with five qualities (piety, strength, prowess in battle, handsomeness, and knowledge). No one man possesses all five qualities, but each of the heroic Pandava brothers bears one of them, and in her next life Draupadi is married to all five of them. Polygamy is no longer widely practiced, and love is not usually thought of in polygamous terms; however, a Hindu might nonetheless explain "soul-mates" as two people who, as the result of some past-life occurrence or cosmic plan, are destined to live a life together.

My mom once suggested a theory - I'm not sure if came from somewhere else, or was her own - that when we fall in love with a person, it's because they exemplify our own ideal selves. If you love someone for their kindness, for instance, it's because you want to be as kind as they are. Same goes for intelligence, beauty, sense of humor, etc. Yet again, love functions as a means of self-completion, for by loving someone who represents our ideals we come closer to attaining those ideals for ourselves. Heartbreak, by this model, might arise when we realize that our loved one isn't actually perfect, and isn't as kind / intelligent / beautiful / funny as we thought they were.

Several months ago, I attended a black church service hosted by Vanderbilt's Jeremiah Generation. In his sermon, the preacher (Minister Jamie Frazier) made an interesting point about love while explaining the doctrine of the Holy Trinity*. God, according to him, is supposed to teach us how to love perfectly; how could this be possible unless God had someone else to love? Thus the trinitarian image of god, by which three divine persons who act as one through the power of their mutual love. It was a striking image, and it would suggest that love is not only a human (or, more generally, mortal**) phenomenon, but an inherent aspect of Divinity as well.

*Incidentally, the doctrine of the Trinity exists not only in Christianity, but also Hinduism (the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) and the Olympian religion of the Greco-Romans (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades).

**I don't believe in exclusively human qualities: things that all humans, but no animals, possess. I've personally seen animals exhibit everything from empathy to depression to deception to humor; modern science has demonstrated tool use, self-awareness, mourning, and even language in other species. Darwinian evolution, in which traits arise over millions of years, has no place for human-only qualities, and neither do any of the Dharmic religions, which consider all life to be en-souled and subject to the same forces of karma and dharma. Islam regards humans as God's appointed masters of the Earth, but also teaches that all life-forms have "communities" and "praise God" in their own way, implying that they have a soul and again undermining much of the concept of human exclusivity.

Now, just for kicks, I'm going to suggest my own ludicrous theory as to the origins of love. In many regards, falling in love is much like a Velociraptor attack. It strikes you when you least expect it, digs in and won't let go, tears you inside out, and consumes your heart, causing intense pain and suffering. It thus follows that love is actually a type of raptor. 65 million years ago, when a massive asteroid impact caused the extinction of most life on Earth, including the dinosaurs (except for birds), the Velociraptors survived by shedding their physical bodies and becoming beings of pure energy (which we shall call Philoraptors, or "love thieves"). They then took refuge in the hearts of early mammals, which eventually became humans. Today, whenever we fall in love, it's because a Philoraptor has left someone else's heart and attacked us. The challenge, then, is to get our own Philoraptor to attack them as well. If this should occur, the Philoraptors will make peace, and mutual love will ensue.

It's not actually any sillier than Scientology; maybe I should start a church based on it. >;-) Just kidding. I just thought of it because I'm obsessed with raptors. Anyway, that's all for right now. Hopefully we can each find success in love, even if the nature of its existence forever remains a mystery.