Folks:
We call it "falling" in love because to be in love is to be at a lower potential energy state than we are as individuals.
What "falls" is your tension level that holds your psychological defenses up.
When those psychological barriers around your identity "fall" you are able to make contact with another in a deep and (ahem) penetrating way that binds two entities into one.
This is ordinarily signified by a Neptune transit. Neptune is famous for "dissolving" barriers or inhibitions.
Now consider the global political situation.
For a writer there is nothing more explosive dramatically than sex and politics.
Today we live in a world of "security" -- where even your identity can be stolen!
How much harder will it be for someone raised in this world to lower those barriers around identity and be able to really REALLY "fall" into love? (correlate with divorce rates?)
In physics, when two particles combine into an atom or atomic structure, they lose energy.
During the formation, energy is emitted in a packet, a spark, called a "packing fraction". The "packing fraction" is the energy a system does NOT have because it is a system, not individual particles.
It's the same with a couple in love. Together, they are bound by the absense of that packing fraction of energy. (thus a third person hitting that atom can disrupt the bond of the relationship by adding energy to it, blowing it apart).
The well known sensation of "security" that a woman feels in the arms of her strong lover obviously a universal experience, an important signal that you are "falling" in love.
What exactly is "security?"
The word has been so misused today, to apply to unusual search and seizure (having your hair spray confiscated at airline checking "security." )
Today "security" means being constantly on guard against intrusion, theft, and sneak attack.
But "security" is really the sensation of not having to be on guard. The sensation of knowing for certain that there exists NOTHING "out there" that might consider harming you or that would do so by accident.
This high contrast (i.e. conflict) between biological and psychological needs and our constructed civilization is fodder for thousands of romance novels (just as the Regency period is for novels about feminine independence).
Tell me what titles you've read lately that exploit that conundrum -- that "security" means today "on high defense" instead of "undefended."
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
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For me, the opposite of security is fear of loss, and "security" is linked to absence of fear. When we were teenagers, our mother (and probably your mothers, too) cautioned us not to let a boyfriend or a man "take you for granted." That always sounded crazy to me. The essence of a true love relationship is taking each other "for granted," being perfectly confident that nothing in this life can make one "lose" the other person.
ReplyDeleteAt this time in my life, "security" is usually prefaced by the word "financial." As we enter our sixties and implement plans to ensure a "secure" life when we leave our paid jobs within a few years from now, I fret over our future prospects (even though, objectively, we're in pretty good shape). That clutching at "security" and indulging those fears are bad spiritual habits, but hard to shake. C. S. Lewis says that the great temptation of married life is not lust, but avarice. How true.
Ah, good, you're thinking about the issue of security. Think also about how the meaning of the word is being changed.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a bad idea to try to stop the morphing of the meaning of words -- but communication is hindered when one person means one thing by a word while the other person means the opposite.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/