s.j. In Focus

Premonitions

 

I wasn’t in the mood writing, so I made this mangaka style, and like a manga it is read right to left.

Arigato!

Love = mc2

It was a late afternoon in autumn. Long angled sunrays turned the sky into a twisted glow of mauve and copper, the sun itself was little energy. The open sea was calm and tiny boats where moving slowly along the horizon. Everything looked peaceful and small up here. Under the sheltering roof, watching the drizzling of the sky that silently painted a rainbow above the city.

A rainbow. . . a fucking rainbow, I was thinking.

This is great. A perfect now-or-Neverneverland moment. What am I going to do? Almighty from above, just tell me what you want! What?!

Not daring to look at her, I kept my head positioned to the rainbow and tried instead to concentrate on the song that began to play in my head, a Bossa Nova song sung by Astrud Gilberto. I adore her voice with the Latin accent. Starring at the fucking rainbow I could only remember the first line:

‘Never trust the stars

When you’re about to fall in love…’

 

Think!, I told myself. Just focus on that rainbow, after all you haven’t seen one for ages. Isn’t it beautiful?! And so many colors, one… two… three… fou…

“Love is just all in the brain.” she interrupted my cerebral counting, “It’s just chemicals, dopamine, Biochemistry, whatever.”

I smiled, also because she broke this awkward silence, and replied with my head unturned.

“Well,” I paused. “love is more than scientists can ever explain. Some things are meant to be mysteries, like believe or miracles. If we had scientific explanations for them, it will take away their essence.”

“No, no, no. Look, it’s just chemical reactions!”

I smiled.

 

I guess I belong to those people who believe that love will always be more then the sum of its natural parts, but of course she was right. For a long time scientists weren’t interested exploring a phenomenon that has been around since Mankind itself. Science is cold and hard. Love is mushy and touchy feely. Science is based on facts. Love is vague and fuzzy. If gravitation, according to Einstein, cannot be held responsible for people falling in love, what then is this thing bound to that makes our world go spinnin’?

Cupid’s arrows wouldn’t be effective if they weren’t dipped first into a cocktail of chemicals with an ingredient called phenylethylamine (PEA), which triggers the other substances. PEA is responsible for that silly smile on your face when you see your crush. When we see someone who is attractive to us, the PEA factory is in full steam. PEA can also be found in strawberries and chocolate. But wait! Before you start chewing that Snickers bar, you should know that the body naturally builds up tolerance to PEA and therefore takes more and more to produce that special love kick, the reason why from the earliest days our human mating pattern has been “monogamy with clandestine adultery”. Some end up craving the intoxication of falling in love so much that they move to one affair to another as soon as the first rush of infatuation fades. (You may continue eating that chocolate bar now)

If you’re lucky to survive the phase of infatuation and its floods of fizzy amphetamines, another set of chemicals takes over, namely endorphins. These are soothing substances that give lovers a sense of security, peace and calm. That is one reason why it feels so horrible when we're abandoned or a lover dies. "We don't have our daily hit of narcotics."

Now you can see a contrast between the heated infatuation induced by PEA, along with other amphetamine-like chemicals, and the more intimate attachment fostered and prolonged by endorphins.

Early love is when you love the way the other person makes you feel. Mature love is when you love the person as how she or he is. It is the difference of passionate and compassionate love. It’s Bon Jovi vs. Beethoven.

Oxytocin is another chemical also called the cuddling chemical, that sets in during the attachment stage as well. It increases the bonding between lovers, and is also released during childbirth and production of breast milk. 

Another chemical is Vasopressin, the monogamy chemical, which is responsible for creating strong partnership bonds. Only about three percent of mammals are monogamous; mating and bonding with one partner for life. Unfortunately, as already mentioned, humans are not one of these naturally monogamous animals.

 

So if I know that Love is just some cerebral chemical reaction, can I choose with whom I fall in love with? Or in other words, can I consciously fall in love? Well, it’s not that easy. You see, nature has wired us for one special person. We draw an image of our ideal partner based on persons and experiences from our childhood. A record of whatever we find exciting or disgusting. Brown eyes or long hair. The way our fathers treated us and how we were taken care of by our mothers. All that information gathered while growing up is imprinted in our brain’s circuitry by adolescence.

Of course no person will ever meet all the requirements, but it takes only a sufficient number of matches for our brains to signal “jackpot!”

In addition nature seeks the best compatible genes as these genes will be passed on to our children and ensure that they are healthy, which is a complex process.

And how do we do this? We sniff out Mr. or Mrs. Right through Pheromones. They are smellprints which are as unique as fingerprints. It is a force which overpowers reason and dictates where cupid’s arrow will land. That’s how powerful Pheromones are. 

 

Now there you have a scientific explanation of love. Love broken down in less than 1000 words. Satisfied? Probably not. Love will still remain a mixture of reality and Nonrealidad. Poetry and phenylethylamine. Facts and fuzziness.

 

The last sunrays became longer and as the rainbow slowly faded I said,

“See that rainbow, we both know it has something to do with the sunlight shinning onto droplets of moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere, but we end up with technicalities that we don’t see the rainbow at all. Before you know it… it’s gone. Sometimes explanations don’t matter.”

We were both silent again.

“Yeah, whatever.”

I nodded amused and glanced at her while she was still watching the rainbow slowly disappear into the young soil of the evening.