"I don't believe in love at first sight."
This is one of the many statements my friend told me after watching the film Kayal. We had a lengthy discussion later about love at first sight and the problems that came along with it. My friend felt that love at first sight was something that belonged to only films and was never applicable in real life.
And so do many people.
Following is a simple description of an experiment conducted by the psychologist Nalini Ambady.
A group of students were given three two-second videotapes of a professor with the sound turned off and the students were asked to come up with a rating for the professor's teaching effectiveness. She collected these judgments and she compared them with the ratings given by the students who had had the same professor teach them for a full semester.
The result - The judgments were very much similar.
I learnt about this experiment thanks to a fascinating book titled 'Blink: The power of thinking without thinking' written by Malcolm Gladwell (I thank you Malcolm for helping me out in a second post with your findings!).
The experiment above shows that instinctive decisions can be as effective as the ones taken over a longer period. The instinctive decisions, a result of our adaptive subconscious, though made in a matter of seconds are a result of all our lessons learnt over our entire lifetime. Why is it that we believe then that a partner chosen carefully over a long period of conversations and understanding would be better than the one chosen at a single glance?
As I try very hard to dig into my memory, I find that I still have very similar opinions about most of my friends at college as the ones that took birth when I first laid eyes on them except a few guys who turned out to be complete opposites. But still, we being a species that always prefers considering the 'majority', I guess it would not be wrong of me to support instinctive decisions.
We do have a lot of close friends but what is it that makes someone 'special'?
A 'special something' perhaps.
I do agree that it might take time for a person to notice the 'special something' in another person to start dishing out more love but is it not possible that the 'special something' might be visible, though not in its clearest form, but as some sign of a charm at first sight?
And these instinctive decisions, as mentioned earlier, are a sum total of lessons learnt and with respect to love, they might as well bring in the characteristics of our parents we observe, according to the great Sigmund Freud.
But on a completely different and even a contradictory note, a general problem that we face is our tendency to try to believe that there might not be a reason, after all.
It is obviously easy to say that 'Love is magical' or 'Love is divine'.
But why is it that we fail or try very rarely to show interest in understanding a feeling that has its roots in our own brains (Fine! Maybe a part of it in the heart!) and try to mix up the cause with the effect?
Instead of spending more time in understanding the cause (the reasons that make us fall in love) we spend more time in understanding the effect (the emotions that follow up with love). And therein lies the root of all romantic problems.
Once the cause is understood properly or to put it clearer - once 'our' expectation we had had of the partner is understood in depth - an obvious revelation would occur as to where we went wrong (in the instance of something going wrong) and if possible, where things could be made right.
Even science suggests something similar.
The beginning is the end of all problems.
A main reason 'Big Bang' has its prominence increase day by day.
I have a few friends who suggest kindly that I stop analyzing about love and learn to experience its magic instead. And I do agree that the feeling of being in love is unmatched. But understanding the reason behind it seems even more fascinating.
After all, would you prefer knowing that you fell in love with a boy/girl because of a closer resemblance to the characteristics of a parent or would you prefer a pure miracle?
Would you prefer knowing that you fell in love because the 'special something' was a collection of all the things that had affected you in life or would you prefer a divine intervention?
I leave the choice to you.
Because love would always be love, be it fact or be it faith.
This is one of the many statements my friend told me after watching the film Kayal. We had a lengthy discussion later about love at first sight and the problems that came along with it. My friend felt that love at first sight was something that belonged to only films and was never applicable in real life.
And so do many people.
Following is a simple description of an experiment conducted by the psychologist Nalini Ambady.
A group of students were given three two-second videotapes of a professor with the sound turned off and the students were asked to come up with a rating for the professor's teaching effectiveness. She collected these judgments and she compared them with the ratings given by the students who had had the same professor teach them for a full semester.
The result - The judgments were very much similar.
I learnt about this experiment thanks to a fascinating book titled 'Blink: The power of thinking without thinking' written by Malcolm Gladwell (I thank you Malcolm for helping me out in a second post with your findings!).
The experiment above shows that instinctive decisions can be as effective as the ones taken over a longer period. The instinctive decisions, a result of our adaptive subconscious, though made in a matter of seconds are a result of all our lessons learnt over our entire lifetime. Why is it that we believe then that a partner chosen carefully over a long period of conversations and understanding would be better than the one chosen at a single glance?
As I try very hard to dig into my memory, I find that I still have very similar opinions about most of my friends at college as the ones that took birth when I first laid eyes on them except a few guys who turned out to be complete opposites. But still, we being a species that always prefers considering the 'majority', I guess it would not be wrong of me to support instinctive decisions.
We do have a lot of close friends but what is it that makes someone 'special'?
A 'special something' perhaps.
I do agree that it might take time for a person to notice the 'special something' in another person to start dishing out more love but is it not possible that the 'special something' might be visible, though not in its clearest form, but as some sign of a charm at first sight?
And these instinctive decisions, as mentioned earlier, are a sum total of lessons learnt and with respect to love, they might as well bring in the characteristics of our parents we observe, according to the great Sigmund Freud.
But on a completely different and even a contradictory note, a general problem that we face is our tendency to try to believe that there might not be a reason, after all.
It is obviously easy to say that 'Love is magical' or 'Love is divine'.
But why is it that we fail or try very rarely to show interest in understanding a feeling that has its roots in our own brains (Fine! Maybe a part of it in the heart!) and try to mix up the cause with the effect?
Instead of spending more time in understanding the cause (the reasons that make us fall in love) we spend more time in understanding the effect (the emotions that follow up with love). And therein lies the root of all romantic problems.
Once the cause is understood properly or to put it clearer - once 'our' expectation we had had of the partner is understood in depth - an obvious revelation would occur as to where we went wrong (in the instance of something going wrong) and if possible, where things could be made right.
Even science suggests something similar.
The beginning is the end of all problems.
A main reason 'Big Bang' has its prominence increase day by day.
I have a few friends who suggest kindly that I stop analyzing about love and learn to experience its magic instead. And I do agree that the feeling of being in love is unmatched. But understanding the reason behind it seems even more fascinating.
After all, would you prefer knowing that you fell in love with a boy/girl because of a closer resemblance to the characteristics of a parent or would you prefer a pure miracle?
Would you prefer knowing that you fell in love because the 'special something' was a collection of all the things that had affected you in life or would you prefer a divine intervention?
I leave the choice to you.
Because love would always be love, be it fact or be it faith.
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