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SHARED MADNESS

What happens to our reason when we fall in love? Why is love so compelling? Why do we call it madness? Why does it seem to always be new, every moment we experience it? Why does it confuse us to the point of losing our mental coherence? Why are we powerless over it?

In attempting to define the experience of "falling in love", we could begin by enumerating a few universally accepted, time tested cliches', such as:

1) love as a state of mind that cannot be created or summoned at will,
2) it is a kind of hunger that has the power to drive us insane,
3) we experience it as a longing that could claim our appetite, our sleep, our freedom, even our integrity.

And all of those would be accurate descriptions, albeit a bit trite.

A modern and popular definition for it could be "codependency", a kind of addiction, whereby we are given permission to blame it on our psychological, neurological and/or genetic shortcomings. It may be explained as a neurotic need to rescue our past. We may end up on Prozac over it, or an cocaine. But the fact that we, overly educated people, tend to "diagnose" love, doesn't mean that it is a disease.

Alchemists deemed the experience as most necessary, in order to transform the lead of our selfishness into the gold of our magnificence. From rigidity to fluidity. From ego to Soul. How does it happen, and why? What brings it on? Can it be stopped? Avoided? Denied? Controlled? Medicated out of us?

It starts with a recognition. The beloved is first seen, or perceived, in the midst of our daily life, usually among common things and familiar people. But he or she is not part of that familiar world. And yet, the beloved is not a stranger to our imagination.

It is as if, in a world of strangers we have become familiar with, our sweetheart is the only one whom we truly know, even if we've only just met. But this isn't the kind of kinship that requires shared memories. In order for love to blossom, what is required at his point is shared madness.

Let us freeze this moment in time. The moment when we recognize the possibility for madness, perhaps similar to the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to take off in a glider.

Our psyche has to be there already, eager to fly, preparing to jump. We couldn't take off while sitting on our couch, watching TV. We must be standing on the edge, just waiting for the right wind to come up from behind us. And this leads us to the next crucial question.

Is it really this person who awakens the madness

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