Why we love
November 9th, 2010 § 3 Comments
Everyone is on a never-ending quest to find a partner, a companion, a significant other that understands them. This has been going on for a while now, and the reason ascribed to this quest is the search for love. I, however, beg to differ. Love is just a coincidence and seems to be a by-product of the thing that people are really looking for, which is for somebody else to understand them.
The reason for this is because people, sadly, cannot absolutely understand themselves and the world around them, so they try to find a partner that can possibly, hopefully, help them reach that tipping point where they will reach that epitomal nirvana. Why then the urge to find a person of the opposite sex (majority speaking) and care for them, be with them? People are still animals so we’re wired as such.
If you will, imagine a sixth piece on the top of the pyramid representing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This piece would hold the fulfillment of universal understanding – a serene understanding. To bring that into perspective, consider inter-personal communication between people. The only way to get a message across from a sender to a receiver is through a medium like speech, writing, signing etc. What happens in the exchange is you consider a message, your brain processes it, you communicate it, the other person receives it, and then understands it.
There are many pitfalls here. Firstly, you might not be able to construct into words exactly how you feel or what you think, and the other person has a different perception of the message from you, as well as different semantic allocation to the words you’ve used. Words are inert and can never carry across the meta-meaning that you feel when you speak them. Although you’ve sent a message across, the receiver will never understand it as perfectly and granularly as you do – in fact, you won’t understand it as well as you did for that infinitesimal moment you came up with it.
This is, I think, where our never-ending quest comes into play. If we would be able to completely understand ourselves, pass along that understanding flawlessly, and use that ability to discover the inherent meaning to our existence, we would probably be acquiescent and relieve of ourselves of that need to find someone else to help us on the journey that achieves exactly that.
Sadly, it’s almost certainly impossible for that to ever happen, and people are bound to chase something they will never find, without knowing what they’re really looking for. This is another one of the human conditions.
How right you are…perhaps a little more emphasis on introspection and a little less emphasis on pleasing others would go a long way in helping us verbalise that which we in ourselves believe to be our own truth….
Interesting post, i have always had a keen interest in the position of love in the self perception game. That perhaps humans fall in love, as a by product indeed, with the view, perception that another human have of them, with reference to the above – their ability to understand the way a human wants to be understood and perceived.
Almost like falling in love with oneself.
So does this mean the human search for love is in reality a need to simply feel universally fulfilled and understood, or
is the search for love perhaps something that makes no rational and logical sense,a tipping point where the human reach that epitomal nirvana derived from a feeling that cannot be accounted to any logical explanation or some, and certainly one of many, need to be understood?
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head in your 3rd and 4th paragraphs. We want to feel understood and understand beyond any degree of comprehension we can currently even try to understand (Sort of like the physics has a 4th dimension we can’t see, that complete understanding is that metaphorical 4th dimension we want to, but can’t understand).
As for the search for love being illogical and irrational – well that’s a given.