Love is never the result of a fall as the popular phrase, “Falling in love”, suggests…however romantic it may sound to your ears or mine from decades of programming and social engineering via film, television, fairy-tales, and other influential images that leave long-lasting imprints that shape how we view and speak about love.
Yes, I realize how bold a statement it is that I’m making. Many in successful relationships would use this same language to describe their coming together that I now, seem to be questioning.
Though I don’t question the results of any lasting union, I do question the language used to describe their coming together.
Language conjures images and ideologies that gives wings to the notion that love is accidental not intentional and behavioral. Any relationship that stands the tests and trials of life does not last unintentionally. The success or failure of love is not the result of happenstance. Couples that stay together over the long haul, do so in the face of all manner of adversity.
In short, it’s not an easy feat for any couple to withstand the tests of time. Somehow, “Falling in love” does not adequately represent what happens between two people when you consider the ‘life’ that awaits them beyond ‘the fall’. We cannot so casually overlook the language used to describe love.
Words convey meaning through ideas and through the images that are present in those words. Falling in love implies that love is not a matter of choice. ‘It’ happens to two unsuspecting people without their consent and sometimes contrary to their own desire.
While this notion works well in films that appeal heavily to the emotions and require nothing of us but the indulgence of our imaginations as we are whisked off into a world of carefree romance where our relationship issues can be solved in less than an hour. The bedroom usually acts as the “great equalizer” to right all wrongs between us.
Whatever is wrong is made right between us between designer layers of high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and soft music that sets the mood and the perfect ambiance for intense ‘problem-solving’. As stated earlier, this works great for breathtaking scenes on the big and small screen, but fails miserably in true living color where life happens outside the shallow frame that Hollywood allows us to live within for 30 and 60 minute segments at a time.
Love is never the result of a fall. Love is a choice. Love is a behavior.
Love, beyond the screen, requires much more than ‘sexual healing’ and other trinkets to build and to maintain. Love is never the result of a fall. Love is a choice. Love is a behavior. There has never been so great or beautiful an accident. There will never be as great a fall. There will never be as great a fight or as great a victory won as that of love. We fight together and build together what we both want between us. A mere fall can never give us that. Love is never incidental. Love is forever and always intentional.
BMWK – do you agree that “falling in love” does not exist?