Falling in Love: Part Five: Marc Gafni

Okay..in the last two blogs I got a bit ahead of myself so with your permission I want to retrace our steps and unfold this falling in love mystery step by gentle step. Okay, ready to go?

Here is the next step!

Agatha Christie, after marrying Sir Max Mallowan, a well-known archaeologist, gave this pithy advise to her gender, “All women should marry archaeologists — as you get older, they invariably become more and more interested in you.”

It all sounds wonderful except for one thing. It is so often not true.

Remember, the worn expression “love is blind” is really based on a confusion of terms. What people really mean to say is “infatuation is blind.” More to the point, falling in love is blind! That is to say it is based on a misperception. This is why infatuation, or the fall into love, is not infinite. It does not get better and better. In fact, it usually gets worse. For eventually we fall out of love and realize that we were totally blind — how could we not have seen this or that!? What hoodwinked fools we were!

It is for this reason that most books on the subject actually suggest that falling in love has nothing to do with love. Indeed many wise teachers suggest that real love doesn’t begin until the day we fall out of love; when we finally wake from the starry-eyed illusion of love which so captivated us and begin to see clearly.

While there is some truth and even wisdom in this teaching, the Hebrew mystics paint a very different picture of falling in love. You see, if falling in love was only a great cosmic act of deception, then it would be a certain sign that we live in a cruel universe that delights in blinding people, shooting them with arrows à la cupid and then watching the whole tragicomic scenario unfold.

marc gafni
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