loveatfirstsight

Love at first sight

by Bob on July 3, 2007

We have all heard the expression "love at first sight". In almost all cultures and societies. And books and stories and all sorts of writings.

Most people think it's either impossible or just a lot of rubbish.

But as George Bernard Shaw once alluded to in his brilliant plays, the thing actually happens.

And when it happens, it's the most transcendent feeling we can ever experience. It's no mistake that the ancients spoke and wrote of it. That Cupid is depicted shooting an arrow of Love through the heart of the lovers which makes them fall totally and unabashedly in love, perhaps contrary to all logic, pomp and circumstances.

There are many types of intelligence and wisdom. We certainly know, and, again, the ancients wrote about it, that there is the wisdom or intelligence of the heart and that of the mind or intellect. These two sometime oppose each other. We can love someone emotionally but our intellect tells us it is impossible in reality. But guess what ? Most frequently, the heart wins out over the intellect. In all cultures. It's just plain human.

We can wait in vain in life to be in love at first sight and like the Sibyl of Cumae in the ancient world, in her unfortunate misconstrued bargain with the gods, wither away our life. It would seem that we must compromise in finding a loved one.

But isn't it particularly brilliant and beautiful when we are in love at first sight ? Of course it is. And most often, this kind of love is eternal, despite our protestations about its not happening.

It's all magic. It makes us warm all over when it happens. It makes us giddy. It makes us silly. It makes us suspend our beliefs and constraints from such. All restrainsts are removed in real love. And we have little control over it.

Some societies have laws about it when it backfires. Such as "crimes of passion", and the like. We can see from this legality that love and passion are hardly erasable when it is deeply entrenched by Cupid's arrow in the heart.

And why do we involve the heart in love ? Why not the nose, or ear, or eye, which is a sensual mechanism ? One ponders this. It is the heart that beats to its own drummer. The senses are useless in true love. We see what we want to see forever. The loved person never ages, despite photographic "evidence" to the partner. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" as the old sagacious expression says. Indeed it is.

And also, first impressions of others are hardly forgotten as they seem to be the ultimate foundation of our beliefs of and feeling for others.

Love at first sight is quite real. Or surreal. Or silly. But you can't tell that to the two people in love. They are not listening to logic. And thankfully so. Eugene Ionesco in his excellent play, "Rhinoceros", has the logician use Aristotelian logic and syllogisms to prove unequivocably that a cat has five paws. So much for life as pure logic. We leave that to Mr. Spock in Star Trek who never quite fell in love as we are speaking of but did go through a ritual passion as a Vulcan on his planet in one episode of the original series in the 1960s.

Clearly, love at first sight happens, and it ought not to be suppressed, and it is a beautiful thing. It is perhaps one of the most beautiful things we humans can experience. For beauty is truth and truth is beauty and that's all we can ever hope to know, as the poet John Keats ended his "Ode on a Grecian Urn".

But then there's the "Social Contract" which complicates this all in everyday life. Who is supposed to be with whom by a social and societal norm. And this happens, too, that someone has to marry another and their true love is elsewhere. This is the thing countless stories and plays have been based upon. It is the incomplete deal we make to appease society to which we subscribe as a pragmatic response.

But one can never erase true love. Cupid was a pretty smart archer. And rather accurate. No wonder Cupid and Psyche were intertwined. Not to mention that 1979 vampire movie, "Love at First Bite". It might in a very funny way actually be relevant. And so it goes.