Are you the love of my life?
We spend our lives looking for someone, for the one. There's a certain comfort to be had in the notion that we are not alone, that someone out there belongs to us and vice versa, so many of us spend a long time searching.
And some do succeed in finding the one. You meet a person about whom you just know.
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Have you ever experienced that? Have you ever looked at someone and thought 'I want him'?
It's a feeling of unwavering certainty that this person is yours, they're the one who was meant for you, the one you're looking for. It's a fantastic feeling. Yet, people who have felt this agree that it's something you can understand only if you've experienced it yourself.
Now, I don't know if that's true, but I have to admit it makes sense...you see someone and just know they're meant for you, sounds bonkers, doesn't it? I can understand why someone wouldn't believe that. I'd probably dismiss it as hormonal BS myself, had I not lived something like this myself.
I was 11 or 12 when I first saw him. He is much older. I saw him on television and I just felt a connection. I stood transfixed in front of the TV. No idea who the man before me was, 'the guy in the shadows, that's him'. I just knew. And it was like you read in all those corny stories...he felt familiar, like 'oh, there you are', like finding a lost part of yourself. I've met him, since then, and seen him a few times and every time I looked at him, I feel overpowered by that same feeling.
In a weird way, it really is like coming home. Hard to describe, even harder to understand, I suppose.
It's incredible, especially since I'm not really one to buy into such stories. I tend to not trust such accounts. Or rather, I didn't. Now I do.
'Love at first sight?' 'More than that'
And apparently, I'm not the only one to have experienced such a thing. In a recent interview, Game of Thrones actor Jason Momoa spoke of when he first saw his wife, actress Lisa Bonet, who is 11 years his senior. It happened when he was only 8 years old and saw Lisa, 19 at the time, on television.
“I was like 'Mommy, I want that one'.”
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They actually met many years later, at a party, and actually fell in love and now they've been together for 12 years, are married and have two kids. Imagine that if this story is true, he has wanted this woman for thirty years (he's now38), which to me is incredible. Also, an indicator that you can actually know.
And if you look around the Internet, there are many such accounts, of seeing someone and just knowing, of getting that gut feeling that this person is the one you've been looking for. All given by people who are now happy with that very same person. After years and children together, some after lifetimes together.
So, maybe it's not all BS...
The Origins of Love
Dubbed 'Plato's most beautiful myth', the myth of Aristophanes – more than 2000 years old – speaks of a very different Earth, populated by three species – the Children of the Sun, two men; the Children of the Earth, two women; and the Children of the Moon, who were androgynous, one male, one female.
And these creatures were supposedly joined at their backs, so that they formed a round sort of human with four arms, four legs, two faces etc. They were supposed to resemble the planets (aka their parents).
But since these creatures were very powerful (so much so that they threatened the gods), Zeus, the father of all gods, decided to split them in two, to punish them and to keep them humble. So, he split them all into two parts with his lightning, threatening that he would cut them again (quite literally, quarter them), if they didn't behave.
After that, humans spent their lives wandering around, looking for their missing half and when they found it, they would hold on tight, so as to not lose it again. But since they had previously been joined at the back, that meant their genitals were (obviously) on the back and so they could not procreate or achieve satisfaction by hugging each other, and so began to die.
Zeus, taking pity on the wretched creatures, moved their genitals around so that they could make love, so the species wouldn't die out and they would have a little consolation in their sad lives.
When we find our other half, we are ‘lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy’ that cannot be accounted for by a simple desire for sex, but rather by a desire to be whole again and restored to our original nature. Our greatest wish, if we could have it, would then be for Hephaestus (the god of fire) to melt us into one another so that our souls could be at one, and share in a common fate.
I was going to speculate that this love at first sight was related to pheromones. I think this to be a science we do not fully understand yet, and quite potentially the compass we ought to be using to find our mates.
However, I think this is ruled out since you speak of seeing people on the television. I can't explain that one.
But, I thank you, for you have inspired me to write a post on my feelings about love.