love at first sight
an irrational delusion, or a glimpse into eternity?
Love at first sight.
The concept itself is evocative. A myth? A dream? A craving? A delusion? A memory? A reality?
It means something different to everyone. But it does mean something. Those four words alone make the blood rush, making you forget what you were thinking about just a second ago.
So for a brief moment, let’s treat it like it’s the most real thing in the world. Like it’s something you can hold; something you can touch; something you can feel. What does it look like? What does it feel like?
The closest example I’ve seen in literature is in Romeo and Juliet’s classic, evocative, and breathtaking balcony scene, taking place in the middle of the night, when Romeo throws caution into the wind and sneaks into the Capulet's residence just to catch a glimpse of Juliet.
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp. Her eye in heaven
Would, through the airy region, stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
— Romeo, Act 2 Scene 2
What is Romeo actually saying? He’s mesmerized; her eyes outshine the stars, only outdone by the “brightness” of her cheek. But it’s not Juliet’s shimmering eyes or her radiant cheeks that Romeo is infatuated with; it’s the images they evoke. When he looks at Juliet, he isn’t really seeing her; she’s just a signifier of something greater that he’s getting a glimpse of.
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other word would smell as sweet.
— Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2
Juliet, on the other hand, focuses on the clandestine nature of their entanglement; the insurmountable barriers facing them, despite the intensity of their attraction. She spends more time monologuing about the perils of her situation than about Romeo himself! Would she feel the same intensity if Romeo was a permissible candidate for her family, like Paris? Or is the source of her experience the obstacle more than the person?
Some, like Romeo, make the mistake of believing that physical attributes are the source of the undeniable and mystical experience of love at first sight. Yet the pursuit of physical beauty is endlessly disappointing. Ask anyone who has fallen prey to serial adultery or promiscuity, forever arguing that their current romance holds the key, that they’ve finally found the source, frantically desperate to share their experience with someone, anyone who will listen. But it’s all weightless and insubstantial; the presence of any kind of depth through commitment dispels the whole illusion and sends you running away.
Others, like Juliet, make the mistake of believing that the situation itself is the source; that the feelings they’re presented must be Destiny’s own creation, for there exists no other intelligible explanation for what they’re experiencing given the odds stacked against them. They’ll endlessly chase the fringes of experience—the night, the darkness, the secrecy, the seclusion, the scandals. But even that proves to be weightless and insubstantial, for the night always ends; and when light breaks, the illusion shatters.
These are two instantiations of the same error—mistaking the symbol for the signified; the representation for the represented; the painting for the real thing. How can you tell? The experiences are more real in memory than in experience. The dream, the vision, and the craving are eternal, but the lived experience can never compare, passing so quickly and leaving no impression that it may as well have not happened, only existing to evoke and stoke the passionate fires of the dreams that remain.
If the symbol was indeed the signified, Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t have spent the brief moments they shared creating art and speaking in the presence of the other; they would’ve held on, channeling all of their attention and focus and presence onto the other. But they don’t. They speak, and their speech is a harsh interruption of what is presented as an eternal connection.
Love, like life, flows
through the heart.
Feel the thrill of the flow
and say nothing.
— Rumi
Haven’t we felt the same? A moment that lives larger in memory than in experience. How often do we wish to go back and savor a moment a little bit deeper, hold onto it just a little bit longer? How often do we crave to bring our full awareness and presence to a moment? But when the moment comes, reality fails to compare to the dream. It’s never how we envisioned, and we prefer the dream, sometimes molding and romanticizing our memory of the experience to better evoke the dream, deluding ourselves that we experienced the real thing.
That’s what we tell ourselves, anyways. What we can’t articulate is that the dream is a representation of our of God, of eternal, androgynous, Love. When Romeo and Juliet see each other, they’re not really seeing each other; they’re seeing through each other; they’re aching for Love, for Union, and are made aware of that ache by seeing a representation in physical form, in human bodies. They’re reminded of an eternal craving that’s forever been imprinted in their psyche, as fundamental as hunger or thirst.
And, oh, the anger we experience when reality doesn’t live up to the dream! The desperation! The despair! How easily do we fault the other for failing to live up to the image in our minds, for failing to be Love, Eros, and Union personified? How desperately do we crave just a taste?
But we’re not God; we’re human, and acting on these cravings in these ways is a fundamental error. It’s the equivalent of chasing after drops surrounding a fountain, getting edged to eternity, getting drunk on wafts, without recognizing that the drops are mere shards, mere splinters of the source, leaving you forever unsated, forever desperate for more.
So what do we do with the craving, the dream, the endless representations? Do we chase after them all, hoping to find the real thing in one of the shards? What other choice do we have?
We can heed the experience and the symbol as a call to adventure. Love at first sight is a beckoning, an invitation, to all those lucky enough to experience it.
No, it’s not an invitation to endless indulgence, endless pleasure, endless sensuality; no, that excess is not for any human being. The invitation—the taste of eternity, the glimpse of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow—only serves to make you ask the question “How can I be worthy?” The experience is evocative and shattering enough to cut through the noise and inertia of your current experience and open yourself up to other modes of being that will bring you closer to the Other.
But to take up the invitation is to open yourself up to a different kind of peril. To proceed down the path is to let yourself transform and change, to let yourself be transformed and changed, and no change is possible without a certain kind of death and surrender, for every experience contains its inverse, and no one knows how to hurt each other as lovers do. Even as they evoke the image of God, they are gifted scythes and intuitively possess the knowledge of each other’s deepest vulnerabilities, and this knowledge never fails to be expressed. Those who know how to love you fully also know how to break you apart completely. It’s the yin and the yang; the yin represents the fruits to be tasted, and the yang represents the pain and depth to be transcended.
Die! Die! Die in this love!
If you die in this love, your soul will be renewed.
— Rumi
Will you open yourself up to the pain? Will you open yourself to your vulnerability? Will you open yourself to be cut apart, trusting that the Other and Love will eternally resurrect you, showing each death to be illusory? Will you accept the call to adventure and stay, facing your mutual horror and shadow together? Will you forego the desire to endlessly satiate yourself on mere drops? Will you forego the desire to endlessly chase your fantasies and your dreams, letting those live larger than reality in your mind?
You must.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
— Rumi
For we need the Other. In the same way that beauty does not exist without a beholder, in the same way that God requires us to experience Its own wonder, we too cannot experience true, eternal, divine Love without an Other to mirror it to us; without an Other who will help us discover that disunion was illusory all along, without an Other who will hold our hand, and walk the perilous path with us to the Source.
Love isn’t found in eyes, cheeks, and secrecy; it’s experienced through people through commitment, faith, transformation, and surrender.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
— Rumi
Do you believe? Do you believe that the image of Love at first sight is but a splinter, a hint at what awaits you? Do you believe that your wildest fantasy is hollow, unable to compare to the reality of partnership? Do you believe that you can change, that you must change? Do you believe that you must surrender to Love and the Other and let it mold you, the same way a river molds its path through a canyon?
If you do, then the next time you experience a sliver of Love through an experience, situation, or person that evokes the fundamental archetypal image, don’t project your dreams and fantasies onto it. Don’t let the experience live larger in your mind than in your heart and body. Truly look and be present in the experience with every aspect of your being.