Can we choose to fall in love with someone? If our minds are so incredibly powerful and we can talk ourselves into anything, can we talk ourselves into falling in love?
Maybe the more perplexing question is whether we can choose not to fall in love.
I have been listening to the song False Alarms by Noah Reid that suggests that either way, we might have a choice. Yet, it also suggests that choosing not to fall in love might simply be an act of lying to oneself.
I tend to think that in the context of love relationships, loving someone – acting lovingly and with grace while feeling genuine care and compassion and appreciation for them – is a choice. But falling in love – that inner stirring of the best kind that is entirely energetic – is not a choice we consciously make. It’s a state of perpetual motion of energy and longings; a state of ever becoming and never quite arriving, one that we can’t choose not to experience once it’s upon us. But we have agency, nevertheless. It lies in the way we respond to those inner stirrings.
The experiences of loving and being in love with someone can be interrelated but each can stand alone. We can simultaneously be in love with and love the same person genuinely, and we can also love someone fiercely, or love someone gently, and not be in love with them. We can also let ourselves fully feel the magical swells of being in love without doing anything about it but witnessing the inner journeys it takes us on.
One experience doesn’t trump the other in any way. They are equally magical and equally powerful. Loving someone is an agreement we make with ourselves about committing our time and energy towards making another person’s life more wonderful; being in love with someone is about making a commitment to ourselves about the way we will respond to our beautiful predicament.
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