Falling in Love: Part Ten: Marc Gafni
Falling in love is not only purposeful, it also invests us with a sense of intention, meaning and energy. The love fall breaks the alienation of cosmic loneliness in our hearts. It ends our isolation and breathes us full of inspiration. Falling in love is much like the Select All mechanism on your computer. One press and you are able to change the Font, Style, and Size of your whole life file; it all suddenly looks very different.
The Greeks called it Cupid’s arrow: a blind, capricious and sometimes mischievous fate that strikes a human being unawares.
Freud, in one of his monumental mistakes, labeled falling in love “regressive.” He understood the “oceanic consciousness” and feeling of oneness which characterizes the experience of falling in love as a fallen state. Truth is, he was boxed into a corner. For Freud, ego strength is the primary expression of mental health, and falling in love is all about softening the ego’s boundaries.
Others, like the incredibly influential 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Schopenhauer, view the first fall of love as a cruel hoax perpetuated by the universe. How else, he asks, could people ever be tricked into marriage and procreation?
We all now however that this invalidation of falling in love is counter-intuitive at best. None of them gives us the sense that our experience of falling in love has been recognized and validated. The integrity of our Eros, wonder, and vitality are undermined. Furthermore, the very rightness and even divine quality of love are ignored and effaced. The secret of the cherubs is the great liberator from the sad and narrow contours of this kind of cynical and ultimately non-erotic thinking.
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