love in the time of science

When the Time Magazine decided to do a Person of the Century edition back in '99, it was
to award the person who they thought had had the most impact through the entire century.
Now Time does a lot of cover spreads, and they're almost always who's who. So who better to pick the best out of the best than them! As you can imagine the list had like all the big names. FDR, JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs (ya, he of the ipod fame), Elvis Presley, and even (SHOCKING!!!) Adolf Hitler. But among them, a little known scientist was crowned king. Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity won out. He wasn't the loudest, or most eloquent, or most influential, and by no means even the smartest, person on the list. But see according to the guys over at Time, the one thing for which the 20th Century will be remembered for the most will be its scientific developments. Apparently science was a really big part of the last hundred years. So in a world full of scientists, what does it mean to be in love?

Is it the ancient mythic asian folk tale handed across generations depicting a conversation between two drunk people:
Drunk #1: "I love you!"
Drunk #2: "No you don't."
Drunk #1: "Yes, yes, I do. I love you with all my heart."
Drunk #2: "No you don't. If you love me, why don't you know what hurts me?"

Is it the whole romanticized idea of a guy bringing a girl the moon (or a red rose) and crossing the ocean for her? Does it necessarily mean sacrificing, to the point of giving up your life for another? Is it blind? When belabored with conditions, does it cease to be "true"? Does it take you breathe away, and does it never end? Is everyone of us really meant to end up with just the one person? Is it written in the stars? And if it's destiny, then is this just God's experiment in which we have no say? O ya, and what if the earth doesn't move?

Or is it the Hollywood interpretation, what Julia Roberts meant when she stood before Hugh Grant in his bookstore telling him "The fame thing isn't really real you know. And don't forget, Im also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her." Or what Anne Hathaway meant when in answer to Jason's question "Why me?" she said, "Because you saw me when I was still a nobody." Or what Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio shared when deep in the Atlantic she held his hand telling him, "I'll never let go!" Or what Chad Michael Murray was feeling looking deep into Hilarie Burton's eyes and telling her "It's you. When all my dreams come true, the one I want next to me. It's you,
Peyton." Or the connection Sanaa Lathan had with hip hop, all the way from her childhood, in the form of an apparently strapping young fellow by the name Taye Diggs. (BTW I think I now need to get a life coz these examples just keep flowing. What!!)

I think love is one of those things that doesn't have an absolute definition, it's purely subjective. You could ask a hundred people in love what it means to them and you'd end up with a hundred different answers. Much unlike the Theory of Relativity above, love is one subject that remains as fluid as the air. You can never really put your finger on it. To some it could be complete trust. To others it could be putting someone else's dreams and ambitions above one's own. And to yet others it could be
accepting the other person exactly as they are, warts and all. And I think all these people would be right. It seems to be the kind of thing that's really easy to confuse with want or desire (spelt l-u-s-t ;). See my thinking is one is fleeting, and the other lasts for a while (forever if the romantics are to be believed). One is superficial and the other runs deep. In hindsight it's usually pretty easy to describe love - after all, if after 27 years you still make each other's hearts skip beats then it sounds like love. But on that first day, can you usually see the next 27 years? Herein lies the problem with
defining love. It's one of those things that is until it's not. And when it stops being then you'll know it wasn't true, if it doesn't (stop being) then you'll know it was. (Eh, am I in danger of becoming a philosopher here?...)

We spend our whole lives searching for true love, which is why our lifetimes are divided into two - there's that first part where we're still searching, and then the second part called "the rest of our lives" when we've found it. And don't take my word for it: just turn on the radio. Depeche Mode - The Meaning of Love; Air Supply - All Out Of Love; Angels and Airwaves - Love Like Rockets; Ashlee Simpson - Love Makes The World Go Round; BarlowGirl - I Need You To Love Me; and that's even before I go into the R&B songs! Turn on the TV: One life to live; One Tree Hill; Felicity; Dawson's Creek; Tell Me You Love Me; Melrose Place... again, I haven't even broached the subject of Mexican soaps! Or go to the cinema: The Other Boleyn Girl, Titanic, Casablanca, If Only, The Notebook, Love In The Time of Cholera, The English Patient... I could really go on. And yet love
remains the most misunderstood concept of all time (although a pretty strong case can also be made for E=mc2 :)

I found this paragraph on the net some time and I think it sums it up pretty well: As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and Platonic love to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. As in even they admit it's impossible to explain (ineffable). And of course, no discussion on love would be truly complete without The Bard adding his voice to the mix:

Love is not love which alters when it alteration
finds. It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempis and is never shaken. Love
alters not with time's brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to edge of
doom.

END