A Fish in Love

I never met a metaphor I didn't like. Not only is this fish out of water, but it is riding a penny-farthing. Of fishes, Lynda Barry wrote:

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke. 

Dr. Mardy Grothe, a very clever and witty writer and author of treasures for the intellectually insatiable, wrote about the 1995 novel Corelli's Mandolin, where Louis de Bernieres tells the story of Pelagia Iannis, a young beauty who lives with her physician father on the small Greek island of Cephalonia. When the island is overtaken by Italian troops in the early days of World War II, Dr. Iannis and his daughter are forced to billet the officer in command, Captain Antonio Correlli, in their house. Corelli is a handsome and cultured man who always travels with his prized mandolin. His passion for music is matched by a disdain for military life, which he demonstrates by replying "Heil Puccini" whenever he is offered the Nazi greeting "Heil Hitler." The beautiful Pelagia soon falls for Corelli, even though she is betrothed to a young Greek fisherman who has left to fight in the war. The developing love affair gravely concerns her father, who sits her down one day and says:

Love is a kind of dementia

with very precise and oft-repeated

clinical symptoms.

After ticking off some of the "symptoms" that he has observed in the young lovers, Dr. Iannis launches into an extended analogy. 

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body ...

That is just being "in love," which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew toward each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we found that we were one tree and not two.

Ambrose Bierce wrote: Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. 

Returning to Dr. Iannis' lecture to his daughter, this is where Mardy and I take a divergent path. It is the path of awareness. Dr. Iannis speaks from his perspective, which is conventional love. Living in society this is perhaps one of the easiest loves to have. It is intimate and personal, but it is also illusory when two people deny their essence in the name of pragmatism or even altruism. If it is the first, it may be more authentic, with two individuals living in earnest. These are the people who claim to have met their soulmate. Another person with whom they are naturally inclined, with both sharing the preference for and ability to sustain a long lasting love affair. But if one is secretly languishing, denial and resentment can arise. These sentiments are formidable even for a well balanced mind, and require higher faculties to escape. These are the willingly chosen ideals that result in a very rich and creative inner reality - sometimes turning one into a phenomenologist. 

Although the sentence: "I never met a phenomenologist I didn't like" doesn't have the same ring as "I never met a metaphor I didn't like" - even if one could argue the structure renders these two concepts categorically equal. 

The next category is love for convenience. History and literature are filled with woeful unrequited ultimately loveless tales of this nature. When we read these stories, we feel instantaneous "compassion" and "anguish" for the main characters, those pour suffering souls living in secret torment, under the spell of insatiable love or the hope thereof. 

If this happens to a flat character, usually a fortunate or unfortunate impetus occurs, and the person follows an almost predestined path back to their senses or a more "suitable" suitor. Either that or the author kills them off creatively. 

If forbidden love happens to a dynamic character, a journey or odyssey begins. These characters are the Odysseuses of the world whom wanton readers will follow, sometimes to the scaffold. Where despite innate trembling imagine their hero or heroine (Joan of Arc, for example) step upon the scaffold with nothing but dignity and grace. Like Marie Antoinette and probably Anne Boleyn, they take one final breath, gaze up upon the morning sky, and let go of enough inner pretense to accept the harsh hand of fate. Their true natural eliteness (not elitistness) will not allow them to superimpose their ideals upon another, so their final word is conciliatory. If nothing happens that requires one final courtesy, such as apologizing for tripping over the executioner's foot; then their deepest hope and faithful desire is their last steadfast thought. In a single helplessly beautiful heroic act, they free their heart from their body, close their eyes, and wait. 

This is just one of many death scenes that history has imposed on some of its most dynamic characters. It is the tragic fate of those unyielding souls who can hear the sun set between perfect action in accordance with self and perfect action in accordance with other. 

Folklore describes these beings as cursed or solitary in nature, and in many ways they are. They may become beloved orators, steadfast to the great potential in every conceivable landscape. They are often educated by the best teachers of the day, but their autodidactical approach to living will seek knowledge from every conceivable source. 

Some are born into old and respectable families, others arrive into states of chaos. Most all turn to some form of writing or the arts, or toward physical experiences that are all-encompassing. Ultimately they set their sights on love and amorous intrigue. If the dynamics of love are not present in such a captivating way, they channel desire elsewhere. Devouring a sophisticated and pleasure-seeking society in perfectly unique ways that speak to them. They may be popular or unknown, but others are not necessarily unknown to them. 

Venus and Adonis - Abraham Bloemaert (Dutch, 1566 - 1651)
The Statens Museum for Kunst

Ovid was married three times, finally finding contentment in his third marriage. His first two marriages were short-lived and not particularly harmonious, giving special relevance to a line that appeared in the Art of Love: 

Love is a kind of warfare

Our penny-farthing riding fish out of water picks up the shattered pieces of Odyssey's heart and turns and twists them into metaphors or historical remedies, reminding us that Ovid was one of the first in history to say that love is war, a more powerful concept exposing the weakness of character behind Dr. Iannis'  love is a mental illness.

The timid would stop here, but a more insatiable being would ask: 

What about fire? 

That ancient flame - the flame of love - has been a central theme in world literature. In The Divine Comedy, Dante used the metaphor to suggest that a great passion can spring from a modest beginning: 

A great flame follows a little spark.

In Guardians of the Galaxy, baby Groot is ever more adorable and irresistible because he has the heart of Groot inside. In the seventeenth century, an English proverb commonly attributed to English cleric Jeremy Taylor continued the theme and became one of history's most popular observations: 

Love is a friendship set on fire 

Lord Byron saw love as a kind of celestial fire, calling it "a light from heaven, a spark of that immortal fire." Honoré de Balzac wrote that "Love is like the devil," adding "Whom it has in its clutches it surrounds with flames." 

Of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Chicago Tribune Book World described García Márquez as taking one into a dream, where the reader emerges with their mind on fire. Not as twisted as Nabokov's enormous appetite and imagination, nor his fatalism either. Like rum calentano, these stories go down easily, leaving a rich, sweet burning flavor behind. 

If only it would stay gone. 

But it doesn't. 

It returns.

Again and again, fecund, savage and irresistible. 

In the words of Maya Angelou: 

Love is like a virus. 

It can happen to anybody at any time.

It may be a gift we give ourselves, it may be designed to catch a heart like a fish, it may be Anouilh's "one arch-enemy" ... it may be instinct, a way to find the way to one's own heart, or it may be a feeble insect in search of its next flower, with an innate will that nothing can dismay nor turn aside (Honoré de Balzac). It may be Nature's fairest gem or an exploding cigar. It may be a flowing wine held in existence or the wild card of existence. It may be wrapped or bare, savage or barbarous, dark, or so primal it purges vanity and leaves one with no other choice but to yield, if only to drag oneself from its torturous grasp. 

It may be fiction or reality or history. It may be the promise of an alliance of friendship taunted by lust. It may become pliable and overly yielding, or die of starvation. Whatever it is, love is a passion exalted and refined, gross and sensual. It is friendship set to music and the foundation of all civilization. 

It is an ocean of emotions, surrounded by apologies and personal expenses. For some it could prove to be more painful that being alive, a perpetual, relentless aching wound. Love is every ode willingly ascribed to it.

Of all it is and all it is not, love is always one thing above all else: Spelled correctly.

The Philosophy of Falling in Love

Amor Sacro e Amor Profano (Sacred and Profane Love) c.1514

Titian

Galleria Borghese, Rome

Philosophy highlights things that give meaning to our lives. Socrates' enduring quest for living the good life liberates the mind toward revelations on these things, including the intimate feelings upon which they may be based, feelings that transform the entity into a collective, for falling in love is not a solitary experience; it is an experience that simultaneously includes others.

Falling in love calls upon the Roman goddess Venus, whose functions encompass love, beauty, intimate relations, fertility and prosperity. She is the embodiment of the Neoplatonic concept of sacred love. Sacred love embodies the notion of 'beyond being' (book VI of the Republic). In Plato's famous analogy of the Sun, he says that the Good is beyond being (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας) in power and dignity.

Titian's painting depicts this concept. Dignity, for a woman, resides in her being protected, i.e., clothed. While power resides in her 'being', in her liberation of form from limited human constraints in reasoning.

Venus, the mother of the Roman people, sits lovingly beside the woman (dressed in white) who has fallen in love. This transformation of state goes from being dignified and seemingly pure (white wedding dress) toward being liberated and free from the predominantly human characteristic of wearing clothing, that state which arises from our functional need of protection from the elements.

When falling in love, an individual transforms themselves from one form of love to the other. From the notion of love based on convention and social norms toward the feeling of being in love, a release from a state or situation that limits freedom of thought or behavior. This flourishing or sense of abundance overflows much like how a fountain of love overflows upon those who partake of it.

Triumph of Cupid (1719)

Carlo Cignani (1628-1719)

Reaching inside the sacred Fountain of Venus is an allegory for falling in love. Cupid, our love totem, reaches inside the fountain symbolizing, in Titian's dreamlike landscape painting, our desire to have that which is set apart and forbidden (Émile Durkheim on sacred things).

Walter Friedländer outlined similarities between the painting and Francesco Colonna's Hyperotomachia Poliphili, proposing that the two figures represented Polia and Venere, the two female characters in the 1499 romance where Poliphilo pursues his love Polia through a dreamlike landscape, and is, seemingly, at last reconciled with her by the Fountain of Venus. This story is easily interpreted as more conquering love, it is an allegory for falling in love, for the journey or transformation that occurs when one is struck by Cupid's arrow.

Falling in love is the dream of love personified. François Rabelais, in The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34) wrote: "Far otherwise did heretofore the sages of Egypt, when they wrote by letters, which they called hieroglyphics, which none understood who were not skilled in the virtue, properly, and nature of things represented by them. Of which Orus Apollon hath in Greek composed two books, and Polyphilus, in his Dream of Love, set down more..." (Book 1, Ch. 9).

Philosophically speaking, falling in love is a quest for the dream of love. It is the search for the grandiose, a desire to "reach toward" that resplendent magnificence, and a finding or liberating of it (depicted in the fountain spilling forth) within oneself. Metaphysically speaking, it is a physical transformation whereby white light is illuminated.

In Titian's painting, we see the transformation of white being made lucid, clear, and plainly visible in a nude Venus. Not only does this vision occur in a dreamlike landscape, but the dreamlike landscape is also a natural place, a return to "home" which is often how those who have fallen in love describe the experience of being in the presence of their beloved.

Falling in love as a return home references our exile from Ithaca, that place in the Greek conception of a hierarchical world in which everyone, in accordance with his degree of excellence, has a place assigned to him, being torn away from this 'natural place' is a form of suffering and injustice, just as a return home is a positive good connected with the restoration of the harmony of the cosmos.

This separation between home and being exiled is depicted in the distance between the dressed Aphrodite Pandemos (left) and the nude Aphrodite Urania. Aphrodite Pandemos is that goddess of low sensual pleasures, whereas Aphrodite Urania is "the heavenly Aphrodite".

The unspoiled, harmonious wilderness in the background of this painting is Arcadia, the home of the god Pan (in Greek mythology), who is associated with the mother goddess. In Pindar's Pythian Ode iii. 78, Pindar, the Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, refers to virgins worshipping Cybele and Pan near the poet's house in Boeotia. Titian's painting could also be an allegory for fortune and fate, with Cupid representing "the child of Zeus...Fortune") [C.M.Bowra, Pindar, page 63; fr. 63.15–20].

Pindar revised traditional mythos so as not to diminish the dignity and majesty of the gods. This painting may also be a subtle example, perhaps, of Pinder's approach to the omniscience of the gods with its elegant compliment: mortals (dressed in white).

Being descendants of divine unions, privilege mortals sit along side their mythical heroes, with cupid serving as an intermediate group between the gods and men, sympathetic to human ambitions. Thus, viewing this painting as an ethical issue, we do not judge the gods, we merely strive to experience their presence, away from our ordinary human experience. Indeed, this paining represents the finest breeds of humanity seated next to divine passions.

"For Pindar a mortal woman who is loved by a god is an outstanding lesson in divine favors handsomely bestowed." [Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition, Oxford University Press (1949), p. 225]

Falling in love denotes a divine union. In this painting Titian's elusiveness is telling his audience that he will not talk of it ("silence is a man's wisest counsel")

[New Nemean Odes 5.14-18. The hushed reference to Phocus's murder is cited and translated by C.M. Bowra, Pindar, pages 67-8: I am shy of speaking of a huge risk / Hazarded not in right, / How they left the famous island, / And what fate drove strong men from the Vineland. / I shall halt. Truth does not always / Gain more if unflinching / She reveals her face; / And silence is often a man's wisest counsel.]

Here, Titian depicts our readiness to shape traditional mythos to fit the occasion.

Venus serves as an oracle to a prophet, commemorating a human victory - claiming love for oneself. Falling in love is that claim upon that which initially eludes us, that sentiment of which the maidens sing:

ἐμὲ δὲ πρέπει παρθενήια μὲν φρονεῖν
γλώσσᾳ τε λέγεσθαι.

I must think maidenly thoughts

And utter them with my tongue

The dithyrambs in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility, flow forth from this painting, an allegory of that sentiment which sings forth from our bosom when we fall in love. Love's ballads capture the grandeur of the moment of victory, of Poliphilo pursuing and ultimately reconciling with his love Polia in Titian's landscape. 

Titian's Renaissance style sets the tone for rebirth, a rekindling of ancient myths that evoke the gods or the Muses. Praise goes to the victor, narrated by myth, the central figure (left) exemplifies a mortal, who transformed, gains an audience with the world of the gods. Titian's Amor Sacro e Amor Profano (Sacred and Profane Love) represents the grand sentiment associated with falling in love, that unfolding of the sacred against a background of symbolic elements such as the sea, darkness, fire from the bosom, mountains, and the privileged moral predicament (depicted the castle). 

King of Syracuse, delighting in horses; and his fame shines

among strong men where Lydian Pelops went to dwell,

Pelops that he who clips the earth with his great strength,

Poseidon, loved when Klotho lifted him out

of the clean cauldron, his shoulder gleaming ivory.

Great marvels in truth are these, but tales

told and overlaid with elaboration of lies

amaze men's wits against the true word.

The Odes of Pindar

Cupid's shoulder gleams ivory. Poseidon, the "God of the Sea" is called upon; venerated at Pylos and Thebes in pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece as a chief deity, Poseidon was integrated into the Olympian gods as the brother of Zeus and Hades (Mount Olympus depicted above left in the landscape). The conflict between Hades and Persephone represents the division between mortals and gods. Pelops, whose cult developed into the founding myth of the Olympic games, represents love's games. Cupid leans over the Fountain of Venus, an allegory for the holy grail or cauldron from which the sacred can be touched. 

Great marvels are depicted in Titian's painting as great marvels are discovered in the experience of falling in love. The wedding between Nicolò Aurelio and Laura Bagarotto in 1514 (the Aurelio family coat of arms is depicted on the sarcophagus) represents a courtship. 

Hippodamia with Pelops in a racing chariot

Hippodamia's father, King Oenomaus of Pisa, was fearful of a prophecy that claimed he would be killed by his son-in-law. So when suitors arrived, he told them they could marry his daughter only if they defeated him a chariot race, and if they lost, they would be executed.

Pelops, son of King Tantalus of Lydia, came to ask for Hippodamia's hand in marriage and prepared to race Oenomaus. Worried about losing, Pelops went to the seaside (depicted on the right side of the painting) and invoked Poseidon, his former lover. Reminding Poseidon of their love ("Aphrodite's sweet gifts"), he asked Poseidon for help. Smiling, Poseidon caused a chariot drawn by winged horses to appear.

Behind Laura Bagarotto is two parts of lighted sky, which could be seen as wing-shaped. On the sarcophagus (on the right) a suitor is being killed while a young maiden, similar to Venus, stands aghast in the background. Flowing from the fountain is Poseidon's blessings.

Titian's Amor Sacro e Amor Profano (Sacred and Profane Love) can be seen as an allegory for falling in love, for the philosophies that illuminate the enormous experience of being 'touched by love'. Falling in love transcends the human predicament and elevates it toward the nature of love, itself (Venus). Love transcends theories of human nature, desire, ethics, and so on.

Philosophically speaking, love logically begins with questions concerning its nature, which is where Titian takes us in his allegory of falling in love. Implied here is that love has a "nature," that it cannot be described in rational or meaningful propositions, only in sentiment. The sentiment evoked in Titian's painting is one that presents a metaphysical and epistemological argument, that love ejects us from our reason; but, on the other hand, it delivers us to the realm of of the gods.

In English, the word "love," which is derived from Germanic forms of the Sanskrit lubh (desire), is broadly referenced in our desire to be god-like in nature. Our natural attraction to love, toward the feelings experience in falling in love, stems from this desire (eros, philia, and agape).

Eros refers to that part of love that inspires passion, an intense desire for something often referred to as erotic desire (Aphrodite Pandemos). Aristotle's Philia, by contrast, entails a fondness and appreciation of the other (Cupid's kindness toward mortals). Agape refers to the paternal love of the gods for humanity (Venus). All three elements of love (the Platonic-Socratic maintains that love we generate for beauty on this earth can never be truly satisfied until we die [sarcophagus]; but in the meantime we should aspire beyond the particular stimulating image in front of us to the contemplation of beauty itself) are presented in Titian's painting.

Falling in love invokes the philosophy of language, of the relevance of meanings, and also provides us with a knowable, comprehensible, and describable understanding of the nature of the gods.

Three little words: "I love you" warrant no further intellectual intrusion. Love is liberated and free and brings us face to face with the gods as an allegory for the divine within.

If love possesses a nature, it is one that is identifiable only in personal expression with it. To be properly understood, one must feel love. Perhaps this prerequisite for understanding love in order recognize its nature is why Titian's painting has long since eluded scholars.

Ruminating on the nature of falling in love coupled with the experience of falling in love opens our eyes to seeing it depicted elsewhere.

Birth

©Soph

My heart is like a dead bush

Whose berries are mute:

My heart is like a bent tree

Whose branches are bent with heavy fruit;

My heart is like an empty shell

That sinks beneath the sea;

My heart is sadder than all these

Because my love has left me.

Raise me a glass of champagne;

Fill it with flair and purple dyes;

Design its label with vibrant impressions,

A colorful intense disguise;

Work it in yellow and green,

In colors and lines reminiscent of my beloved fleur-de-lys;

Because the birth of my new heart

Will emerge when new love finds me.

இڿڰۣ

This poem does not share in the boundless originality of Emily Dickinson. It is far from the solitary sublimity of the handful of Emily Brontë's apocalyptic lyrics, and yet it is a poem of majestic and permanent presence, with a stance reminiscent of Christina Rossetti's elegists of erotic sorrow. 

The touch of champagne is invariably light and bubbly, while the pitch is soft and low, disturbingly felt. And, though very rarely are ecstatic and celebratory thoughts expressed in hushed undertones, the emergence of them in the final stanzas brings us to a happy place whereby their presence is remembered, and longed for. 

This simple remembrance alludes to the potential guilt of the surviving sentiment: hope, a concept which was not perceived as positively by the Ancient Greeks as it is today. 

"My love has left me," is plangent with heartache, while "the birth of my new heart will emerge when new love finds me" is of little comfort, since hope is but a little respite granted by erotic loss. 

The happiest sentiment: "In colors and lines reminiscent of my beloved fleur-de-lys," is where one finds the gracious, gently testifying presence of a uniquely personal aspiration ~ despite the love that was lost, leaving the Reader with an expectation or conviction that assures one that the prospect of love is just beyond the horizon, even if it is not yet present.

One would not normally associate this poem with "happiness" ... but happiness is not only a blissful feeling devoid of other sentiment, happiness is a physical space into which one moves. Happiness surrounds all the other emotions and is there, available for our choosing. Sometimes, as in this poem, we have to search harder for it, but it is there. It appears the moment we fill our minds with happy thoughts. In that brief moment, pain is but a background noise. As with all human sentiment, happiness has to be continually renewed or it fades. However, every time we choose to fill our minds with happy thoughts, we are born anew. Expectation, or birth, is thus the intended sentiment of this poem, and hence its title. 

The Probability of Falling in Love

La gamme d'amour (The Love Song) 1715-18

Jean-Antoine Watteau

The National Gallery

The probability that one will fall in love with the person who sits next to them in a coffee shop, for example, equals the probability of a number of factors. The simplest and most fundamental qualitative law of probability is the extension rule: If the extension of A includes the extension of B (i.e., A ⊃ B), then P (A) ≥ P (B). Because the set of possibilities associated with a conjunction A&B is included in the set of possibilities associated with B, the same principle can also be expressed by the conjunction rule P (A&B) ≤ P (B): A conjunction cannot be more probable than one of its constituents. This rule holds regardless of whether A and B are independent and is valid for any probability assignment on the same sample space. Furthermore, it applies not only to the standard probability calculus, but also to nonstandard models such as upper and lower probability (Dempster, 1967; Suppes, 1975), belief function (Shafer, 1976), Baconian probability (Cohen, 1977), rational belief (Kyburg, 1983), and possibility theory (Zadeh, 1978). [Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment; Gilovich et al, 2002]

Fortune held back by Love

Guido Reni (1575 - 1642)

In contrast to formal probability theories of falling in love, intuitive judgments of probability are generally utilized. People do not normally analyze the experience of falling in love into exhaustive lists of possibilities or evaluate compound probabilities by aggregating elementary ones. 

Instead, they commonly use a limited number of heuristics, such as representativeness and availability (Kahneman et al., 1982). Our conception of judgmental heuristics is based on natural assessments that are routinely carried out as part of the perception of events and the comprehension of the messages. Such natural assessments include computations of similarity and representativeness, attributions of causality, and evaluations of the availability of associations and exemplars. 

These assessments are performed even in the absence of a specific task set, although their results are used to meet task demands as they arise. For example, the mere mention of "motorcycles" will send most cultured women reeling, while the mention of a favorite opera, painter, or musical score would be received with great attentiveness. Similarly, the mentioning of specific, negative-thought inducing subjects such as bouts with illness, professional failures or challenges, or personal family tensions might equally cause a potential suitor to run for the hills. 

Bacchus (1524)

Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri 'Dosso Dossi' (1490 - 1542)

The assessments made regarding a potential mate or lover are more closely related to a running list of the qualities one seeks in another. Generally the qualities one seeks are directly proportional to their socioeconomic status, educational attainment level, desirable character traits, and physical attractiveness. The more complex an individual, the more complex the list of desirable traits and qualities. The more flexible an individual, the higher the probability an individual will consider the "life story" associated with a given union rather than a specific list of qualities and features. For example, a well-traveled individual will more than likely prefer interactions with an equally well-traveled individual or an individual with the means/interest to travel.

The Whaleship "Emma C. Jones" off Round Hills, New Bedford (1854)

William Bradford (c. 1590 - 1697)

Private Collection

The probability that one will fall in love with the person seated next to them in a coffee shop is probably the same as it ever was; however, the probability that two individuals will continue their liaison beyond that offered during the initial time it takes to consume a warm beverage is more complex than ever before. In an age of increasing importance placed on self-understanding, discerning individuals know who they are and what they're looking for in another. Irrespective of the strategies or self-talks associated with a given list of prerequisites or mate-selection parameters, the proportion of people who go on second dates is ultimately based on how the other person makes them feel inside. 

Le Ravissement de Psyche (The Rapture of Psyche)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 - 1905)

Catharsis of the Heart

Catharsis of the Heart

A philosophical explanation on the nature of love and hate

Someone once said that it is better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for someone you are not. The question of which is more powerful – love or hate – takes us on a journey of self-discovery, contemplating the very nature of the human condition and whether or not we can escape from this catharsis of the heart.

Aristotlean theory describes how experiences bring to surface personal subliminal responses from the depths of our being. However, unless an individual has personally experienced either one of these emotions, the notion would appear strange if not downright irrational.

Irrational is often times the word most commonly associated with both love and hate. When immersed in either one of these emotions, we aestheticize our self in another, feeling only the emotions that confirm or deny our internal experience. Given that both feelings must be brought to the surface by some external stimuli, the importance one places on either may be a matter of biological functioning.

Hate, a brute emotion, crystallizes when conflict and angst from the deepest levels of our being are stirred. Evidence of aggression in our earliest ancestors indicates that hate might be biologically hard-wired into us, supporting the evolutionary concept: 

Survival of the Fittest.

Love - that smile of the mind - is considered by most to be healthy behavior. Loving feelings “move mountains” as they say, but they might instead stem from a more primal, evolutionary aspect of self where love is merely part of the process of natural selection.

On the surface, it seems that a radical difference exists between love and hate, and yet, when you look deeper into your self for the origin of where these feelings arise, it feels as if there is only a fine line between them. This is because both experiences stem from the core of human functioning where feelings reverberate in our entire beingness; where our deepest perceived sense of self comes alive, carried away by either tragic or aesthetic enjoyment.

Whether biological or imaginational, it would seem that we are hardwired with a readiness for both experiences, which need only a single trigger to imbue any object with fantasized perfection or demonized imperfection. Seeing love or hate in the dynamic unfolding of life is largely dependent upon the balance of emotional needs we hold within us, revealing that the power we give either emotion says more about us than it does about the nature of love or hate. 

Distinguishing which one is more powerful is as personal as the experience itself. It is in this revelation that we understand Shakespeare: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”