Have you been in love?

Do you remember in your early relationship with your lovers/spouses, how your hearts raced when you suddenly heard their voices on the phone. How you had butterflies in your stomachs when you prepared to meet them?

One of the most intriguing emotions in the spectrum of joy is Love. While we get more poetic about it, you can dissect it with science. There are 3 distinctly different physiological and emotional categories of love - lust, attraction and attachment - and biologically, they all relate to ancient drive to mate and evolved with different purpose.

Lust evolved to get you out looking (associated primarily with estrogen and androgens).

Attraction evolved to make you focus and expend your energy on one specific individual (associated with elation and craving for emotional union linked to likes of serotonin).

Attachment evolved so you would stay with that individual and raise offspring once mating was accomplished.

Well, something new to learn.

** Inspired by John J Ratey

Life is like a river

Have you noticed the lapping of a river, sound of the current? There is always a sense of extraordinary movement. But the little pool that is away from a swift tide is stagnant. This is how we barricade ourselves with our families, cultures, views etc. letting life go by that is constantly changing with extraordinary vitality and beauty.

But you see, life is not permanent. We are into spring now. We have seen all these trees naked with no leaves waiting for spring. Now we will see the trees filled with the music of leaves, which in due season fall off again and that is the way of life.

But we humans don't want that. We cling to our traditions, society, name, little virtues because we want permanency. We are afraid to lose the things we know. We want everything that gives us satisfaction to be permanent. We refuse to accept life as it is in fact.

The fact is that life is like a river, endlessly moving on, ever seeking, exploring, pushing, overflowing it's banks, penetrating every crevice with it's water. Let your mind flow. It will restrict you with a wall of insecurity, tradition, ancestral social theories. Don't let it.

Flow everyone.

** Inspired by JK