CHAPTER 2
The Ubiquitous Question – He/She Loves Me Or Loves
Me Not! And The Elusive Finality Of Answer…
Growing up, being young and qualifying for eligibility of ‘attainments’ of life and living is full of multidimensional shades of conundrums and conflicts. ‘To be or not to be’ confusion apart, the equal, if not bigger conflation is – ‘It Is Or It Is Not…!’
Often, consciously or unconsciously, almost every young man and woman faces this conundrum of – He/She Loves Me Or Loves Me Not! The question is ubiquitous, so are answers but still, no answer has the merit and matter of finality. Why?
Simple fact is – If there was singular, logical and objective answer, this ubiquitous question would never have been in the domain of confusion, conflict and dualism, since the inception of humanity!
However, smart answers pervade the youth universe in full force and every such answer claims the finality. Still, there are as many answers as are people on earth…
Someone said – ‘It is so easy to know, if a man and woman are in love or not! If both of them are confused like stupid and at their hypocritical best to ascribe each other’s stupidities as decisive genius, they are certainly and typically in love…!’
Jokes apart, the thing at the core no doubt is the series of confusions. Let us unravel and decipher it, just for the sake of hypothesis building, to arrive at something ‘foolproof’...!
Somehow, the confusion starts with the very idea of love. If I ask, ‘she loves me or not’, then there has to be a supposition that she knows what is love and also is sure she has it for me or not! For example, if I ask you, ‘Do you have dhikchakdhoomchak with you?’, you can answer yes or no only when you know what is – dhikchakdhoomchak!
Therefore, the very first step branches into four confusing steps –
Anyway, let us move out of it and straightforward talk about what love is, as it is the primary step, before we ask, ‘He/She Loves Me Or Loves Me Not!’ As we enter this domain of defining love, we in fact enter the castle of confusion, which is even bigger than the open field of confusion we were in. That is because, even science has not yet fully deciphered the brain mechanism, which we can say creates all realisms for us…
Anyway, let us accept the most authentic definition of love, the wise humanity of contemporary times has evolved. This definition says –
“Love is an intangible, emergent and very subjective expression of emotions in terms of behavior-action to extend the domain of self’s homeostasis wellness in the ambient environment. When the self accepts and adopts something and someone as right and good for its homeostasis wellness, there is a neurochemical and neuroelectrical impulse to merge in as part of its larger ‘self’. This Process Is Body-Mind Consciousness Expressing In Terms Of The Emotion Of Love.
Love is essentially an extension of one’s ‘self’ and subjective consciousness to accept and accommodate a thing, idea or person in its fold. Therefore, love basically is a very selfish and self-indulged emotion, an expression of the self’s ever-present need to maintain its homeostasis. It is our higher consciousness, which assigns and aligns this ‘selfishness’ to lofty and noble values of life and living in societal space.
This means – Love is a subjective intangibility, orchestrated by objective tangible instincts but an expression of cultured consciousness. This in turn means – Love is a cocktail of both instincts as well as cultural elements of self. Now, another dimension of confusion and conflict is added…
Science says, there is nothing purely instinctive in modern human’s body-mind construct as dominant cultural elements have percolated in all instincts, either shaping them or at least shading them as per contemporary time and space realism. Therefore, it is impossible to say, what is there in a human instinct of love, which we can term as ‘instinctive’ as all instincts are already a mix of instincts and cultural elements. So, we cannot say what ‘nature’ constitutes love as all ‘nature’ now has elements of ‘nurture’…
Moreover, cultural consciousness is also never pure as all cultural sinews are fueled by instinctive urges. If we see so much culture of ‘attitude’ in love and relationship in modern times, it is very difficult to say, what shape and shade of attitude is instinctive and what cultural. Nature and nurture are so stupidly hugged to each other that a separate identity seems impossible…
So, more we attempt to make a logical, objective and singular definition of love to know it exactly, more confusion and conflict creeps in…
There is another very important point, which science now tells us about love. This somehow accentuates the idea that love is a stupidity of conundrum. Science says, when in deepest depths of love and intimacy, a person’s cortex part of brain is shut down and only the mid-brain parts like thalamus and hippocampus works overtime. We now know that cortex, the upper brain, is essentially the new brain and can be truly considered a human brain, as it deals with logic and higher cognitive functions. This shuts down when in abyss of love and intimacy. Means, love is so very much instinctively aligned to illogical and confused state of mind. This seems true as the mid-brain, which is essentially the archaic mammalian brain, given to simplistic ‘reward-rejection’ emotion-handling, becomes the key decision-maker when in deep love and intimacy. This somehow suggests, love is a stupid value-summation of asymmetrically asynchronous conflations…
Add to it the modern knowledge about how our brain works through its plexus of neurons. Science says – ‘Neurons that fire together, wire together’. This means, different people have different neuron firing mechanism, depending on their experiences and learnt perspectives. Therefore, different people shall have different takes on the definition of what they subjectively ‘perceive’ as love.
Subjectivity of perception is core to the mechanism of love, because, this is the core realism about how we see, perceive and accept – ‘Who I Am’. This ‘I’ itself is a subjective virtuality and that is why, love remains a subjective conundrum…
This is the trouble of love…! This love is an expression of ‘self’, the sense of ‘I’, the subjective consciousness and as consciousness itself is still not fully deciphered by science, we cannot with surety say– ‘What Is Love, As We Cannot Say, What/Who Is ‘I’, Which says, I Love You…!’
However, one thing is for sure – all possible expressions and acceptances of the idea and incidence of love shall always have singular unputdownable and overencompassing element of Confusion, Chaos and Conflict. This is how ‘I’ is defined to be in a state of perpetuity…!
In the next chapter, we try to delve deep into the mechanism of body and brain, which engenders this idea and incidence of love.
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