Love is not an equation

For those of you who do not know, Romeo met Juliet at the feast of the Capulets where he had come to find another woman named Rosaline, who disdained him and never requited his love. That is when he saw an exceedingly beautiful girl named Juliet, who could teach the torches to burn bright. It was love at first sight, which picked up all the pieces of Romeo's broken heart and put it together with magic touch.

People fall in love all the time, men and women, who feel attracted to each other, their hearts melting like cheese under the broiler. It starts with the urge from a glance, then from a look, and then from a touch. Slowly it takes over the body and soul, bringing restless days and sleepless nights, anxious for togetherness and desperate for union. But all roads do not lead to Rome in love. Some end up in marriage, but others drop on the road, tired, sick, lost, confused, or dead.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

If love is compared to the flames, then either the fire must come to the wood or the wood must be thrown in the fire. In many cases love starts with infatuation, one person feeling excessively attracted by another, and that person becomes desperate to express his feelings like a festering boil waiting to break. Even if love starts in two hearts at the same time, it is always one heart that takes the first step, writes the first note, makes the first phone call, or gives the first wink. This is when it becomes like a bargain. The weaker of the two is the first to give in.

Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that if you loved, then you should be loved, because all love was mathematically just as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. But then Oscar Wilde was convinced that love was not the same thing between man and woman. Man always wanted to be a woman's first love and woman liked to be a man's last romance, he said. The upshot is that man and woman do not approach love from the same perspective and love, as a result, varies between them not just in nature, but also in degree.

In fact one partner gets a bit more involved in love, a bit more attached and interested to maintain the relationship. It is believed that many parts of the brain get involved when someone falls in love, but two regions play a more dominant role. The Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) shows heightened activity in passionate lovers and the Caudate Nucleus plays a key role in the brain's motivation and reward system. The brain scans reveal that women tend to show more activity in areas that process attention, emotion, and memory recall. Men, by contrast, are more active in areas associated with the integration of visual stimuli and physical arousal.

Indeed, love is just an altered state of mind under the influence of chemicals named dopamine and others, which are produced in the VTA region and then distributed to other regions of the brain. The fierce energy of love, which drives lovers crazy, and compels them to court each other round the clock, defying all hurdles and difficulties, is the result of this influence. The same influence also produces the feeling of elation-even mania, which is the core feeling of romantic love. When Romeo thought that Juliet was dead, it was perhaps this mania which led him to an impulse, which forced him to take his own life. Juliet came under the same impulse when she found that Romeo was dead.

Kahlil Gibran claimed that the greatest pain that arose from love was loving someone you could never have. But then Romeo overcame the grief of being ignored by Rosaline when he met Juliet, though little did he know that the joy of that love was going to become a tragedy soon! Little did he know that he would hold that love in his hand and see it slip through his fingers, that he would not be able to unite with his beloved although both of them literally died to reciprocate their undying love for one another.

The product of love, therefore, varies from person to person, and it flows like water from top to down. And no two persons will be at the same level of love before, during, or after their courtship. The level fluctuates from time to time, adjusting to their emotional weather, which is controlled by fidelity, care, patience, tolerance, physical attraction, sexual behaviour, economic means, mental dimensions, and people around them.

When Prince Albert died in 1861, it is believed that Queen Victoria was completely devastated. She did not appear in public for three years. She never stopped mourning her beloved prince, wearing black until her death in 1901. There are more famous love stories, which are examples of how two people suffered equally in love, yet cherished each other in life and death. During the battle of Actium, Antony heard the false report that Cleopatra was dead, and he took his life by falling on his sword. With no hope left, Cleopatra committed suicide by inducing a poisonous asp to bite her.

In 1612, a teenage girl named Arjumand Banu married 15-year-old Shah Jahan -- she would be renamed Mumtaz Mahal and bear Shah Jahan 14 children. When she died the grieving emperor resolved to build a fitting monument for her. It took 20,000 workers and 1000 elephants nearly 20 years to complete this monument -- the Taj Mahal. Deposed by his son, Shah Jahan was imprisoned in the Red Fort of Agra, and spent lonely hours staring across the Jamuna River at the monument to his beloved queen. He was eventually buried beside her in the Taj Mahal.

Love is an inequality that gives the illusion of an equation. People fall in love, but two hearts are seldom at equilibrium. Love is biochemical in the end, the composition of the brain, hormones, neurotransmitters, etc., which controls desire and emotion. It is the same thing that leaves one heart aching and another exalted, one heart bleeding and another beatific, but rarely does it leave both hearts equally satisfied. Man and woman fall in love as much as they also fall out of it. Love is as much an obsession as it can be an obfuscation. It is a passion that works like a magic potion for those who are fortunate. For others it is a poison that kills slowly.

A sometime sheep farmer named Samuel Butler, who became a noted English novelist, suggested that to live was like to love. There is all reason against it but there is all healthy instinct for it, he said. People die for love and they also live for it. People kill for love and they also save lives for it. People walk in the air when in love and wallow in despair, when they get hurt. People build Taj Mahal for love and they also destroy Troy for it. All these happen because love is not an equation. It comes in flows and ebbs but rarely in steady streams.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.