the tru meaning of falling n love

We call it falling in love. When you think of it, though, love is actually the place we land in—if we’re lucky. What we fall through in the first wild, sweet flush of romance is desire, and it’s a thrilling ride with ups and downs of fascination, curiosity, joy and passion. It is possible to resist this exhilarating plunge, but few choose to do so. Desire itself is desirable. When we fall in love—or fall through desire—we become like geodes, those nuggets of rock that are rough and drab on the outside, but which, broken open and buffed, reveal a jeweled core. For millennia, poets and singers, playwrights and artists, novelists and filmmakers have turned to desire and its transformations as a topic that never ceases to provide inspiration. Yet what the art they make rarely conveys is that the polisher of those rough surfaces is not the beloved, but the lover’s own awakened being as it quickens to the grandeur of loving and being loved. Suddenly we have the opportunity to lavish upon another all the wondrous aspects of ourselves that we feel have remained untapped till now: creativity, sexiness, tenderness, an adventurous spirit. Believing that the other will somehow make us more of who we were destined to be, we behave in ways that fulfill the very prophecy we imagine. We glow. We sparkle. We carry light inside us and shine on the world as we go. Eventually, of course, the fall must end, whether in a long, loving marriage, a quick and tumultuous break-up or anything in between. We hit ground. We see that the other person is no magician come to transform us, but simply another human in search of his or her own jeweled core—who just happened to believe for a time that it could be found in us. We are cast back to our old selves again, dull and unpolished. It feels like a terrible betrayal. But something even better can arise at the end of the fall—or whenever we choose to take it on. If we dare to keep our breached heart open and experiment with a different kind of desire, one that is open-ended, unpredictable and full of potential, we not only discover endless new facets of that jeweled core, but take control of it, so we can move into a world of our own choosing, our own delight. This transformed desire is not directed at just one person. It does not fade. It powers us through good times and bad, constantly replenishing us with an ever-greater capacity to love and to act from love. The great German poet, Goethe, called it “soulful yearning,”