We spent a couple of days talking about love in class and somehow I never found the chance to say what I really thought about the matter, which is why I am now writing about it.
So the other day I was talking to a friend of mine about what truly meant to be in love. To my surprise, she told me she doesn’t even know if she has ever been in love or how it feels despite having a couple of relationships in the past.
In my opinion, the problem that I’ve seen throughout my short life is that all these emotions and feelings that we experience day by day are merely expressed with words, such as the feeling of love, happiness and sadness. But are those words really describing how we feel deep inside? To me language has been a barrier: words take away the essence of what we really feel; words have tried to put those same emotions we can’t explain into rational letters. But emotions and feelings are so much more than words. We desperately find the need to express those feelings, sometimes in the form of words and by doing so, we limit the extent of our feelings.
Going back to my friend, I asked her if she was ever happy. After a moment of confusion, she replied positively. Then I asked her what it felt like to be happy or what happiness really meant. This time she couldn’t answer me. See, we describe our feelings and emotions through the effects that they have on us. And we categorize those effects with words. If we are happy, we smile or laugh. But what really propels our human bodies to contract our face muscles or why our human bodies are designed to release dopamine when we laugh? What makes certain things work the way they do? Or in the bigger scope of things, how does the physical world, which is directly linked to the emotional world function? These questions I believe no one can answer and if anyone can, please do. We just feel what we feel and are what we are.
Now, regarding being happy, can you, the reader, tell how it is like to be happy? The first thing you will tell yourself is about the effects of being happy: the laughter, the good feeling, and such. But if we really look deep inside, we really don’t know anything about being happy. Sure, we can put a human being into a CAT scan and see what parts of the brain are triggered and the hormones increase during this period in time, but how do really feel? Can we describe such feeling with words? If we cant describe such a quotidian feeling we get daily, how can we describe something such as love? Individuals inspired by this irrational feeling will tell you how their chest feels tighter with each second that you think about that other person, or that addicting feeling telling you, you need her/ him, at this precise moment, with you.
If we look at love from the chemical perspective, everything makes sense. Hormones have put us into this type of trance that numbs us and blinds us, and before we know it, we are addicted to this other person due to this hormones. However, can we objectively and effectively describe this trance we go through?
Personal experience has told me that love is so much more than what we see in dramas and movies. Our head thinks rationally. We shouldn’t do it, it won’t be good for me, or it just won’t work out. Our bodies will tell us otherwise. We want this feeling; we need this feeling. We try to forget about it, but we don’t want to. Why? We are social creatures, we are designed to communicate with each other, to express and share our feelings even in words, to love and to be loved.
We have a deeper meaning in life than just continue the predominance of our species. We grow up with a conscience, a personality, a self. We are taught what is right and wrong. We experience the world and perceive what truth is with those senses that interact with reality, but this, I will save for another discussion. ; )
Posted by antonio2090 on December 19, 2008
Tags: Uncategorized
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