In Continuum.

No, this entry is not about the band who recently covered Desolation Row by Bob Dylan. It'd be uncharacteristic of me to blog about a band that I do not have particular feelings for. Bands appear in titles of blog entries for two reasons: either they are really good or they are really band. I believe Blonde Redhead made it onto the title once because I love them to death, whereas Jonas Brothers also made it onto the blog entry title because I hate them to death. My Chemical Romance just so happens to have the same name with the topic I'd like to discuss on my blog in regards to chemicals and love. I don't have a particular dislike for the band, which is also why it is unlikely that they'd appear on any blog entries anytime soon, with the entry dedicate to them. I do admire Gerard Way's work with comic books though, and he is definitely a gifted person in that field of work, I must say. With that said, this entry isn't really about the band, but about the kind of romance that is born out of chemical reasons - all of them. In truth, what we feel for our dogs, our cats, our parents, our lovers, they are all little chemical reactions in our heads, hormones released to tell you what to do and how to act. Yeah, simplification of complex human emotions sucks, doesn't it. 

It's usually easier to tell someone why you don't like a person than why you like someone. You know, like that other time one of your friends asked you why did you fall for that certain someone in the first place. It is usually more difficult to come up with a definitive answer other than "I like him". You don't really know what that word means though, other than the fact that it is a "feeling" you get when you are around him. But if I were to ask you why you don't like a certain person, all the reasons will come rolling off your tongue - easy. I hate his guts, he dresses funny, he smells weird, he is overly enthusiastic in class, he flirts too much, he has a bad attitude, he drives a better car than me, he complains too much, he is too full of himself, he thinks himself as being holier-than-thou, he thinks that he is better than everybody, he is of a certain race, certain country, or he just speaks with a strange accent. It is always much easier to say why you don't like somebody right off the bat, no questions asked, if you really have a personal vendetta against that person. Even if we are talking about why you don't like someone romantically, the reasons are usually pretty easy to come by too. We are just friends, I am not attracted to her physically, we are of a different religion, he is already attached - you know, stuff like that. 

The feelings you get when you hate a person, or when you are not romantically attracted to someone, it is always very easy to come up with rational reasons. But when you like somebody, when you love somebody, the reasons almost always doesn't seem very rational. You just do, and I am sure you'd agree with me. You just get that feeling when you are with somebody you love, and people has compared it to having butterflies in your stomach - in a good way, of course. It has been a myth all throughout history, and poets and writers have written extensively on the topic. In fact, every story and poem and songs that ever existed on this planet probably involved love or was born out of love anyway. Nobody could put a finger on it, but they described it with all kinds of flowery languages. All was good, until science came along to ruin everything for the lot of us. But before that came along, we were made to believe that love is this magical thing within us, much like the idea of having a soul or something like that. It isn't tangible, and it is something that flourishes out of a relationship, and manifests itself into a dozen different things. Sounds like something right out of the pages of a fantasy story for children, but it really isn't. 

Science ruins a lot of things, especially for those religious people out there. I won't get into that one, because this entry has got nothing to do with it. If Shakespeare is alive right now, he'd probably be disappointed by the fact that love has been reduced to chemical reactions in our bodies. Exposed by the scientists out there with test tubes, it has been pretty much proven that it is, like the rational reasons behind hate, nothing more than chemical reactions. There is, in fact, a rational explanation to what love really is, and there is nothing mythical about it at all - which sucks. Science, in nature, attempts to explain things, and sometimes it goes too far with explaining things that everything becomes compartmentalized, if you know what I mean. Like, you can't admire a rainbow without thinking about the fact that it is merely the effect of light passing through the moisture in the air. You can't really look at snowfall and not think about how it was formed up in the skies. They are still very amazing and somewhat miraculous processes, but just take a minute and imagine if you were a caveman of sorts, and you know nothing about light refraction or condensation. Looking about the rainbow and the snow would be like us landing on the moon for the very first time, on a daily basis. 

You know how your emotions go all over the place, you lose sleep, you gain or lose your appetite, all these things you experience when you are in love? Those things are caused by a little chemical in your head called serotonin, produced by the central nervous system and intestinal tract. So the next time you are thinking about someone ceaselessly into the night, it isn't really because you are in love and that the person is clouding your thoughts. It is because you are stressed out, in a way, by the secretion of serotonin in your head. And you know that feeling of racing heart beats and the feeling of excitement, that isn't because your lover is there, not really anyway. It is caused by this stress hormone called norepinephrine, which causes the pressure of our blood to rise. The real essence of love, though, comes from another chemical in our head called oxytocin. You know, the bonding and the trust and the attachment, they are induced by all the touching and the hugging, and the brain's hypothalamus releases it to the rest of the brain and spinal chord. Of course, all these have to be triggered by something, you know, to make it happen. You need the touching and the hugging to trigger oxytocin, for example, and you can't do that with just anybody. But still, knowing that it is not some magical thing embedded in all human beings at birth, cheapens it a little bit somewhat. 

I read this article in class a few days ago and felt that it'd be interesting to blog about it. A discussion between my friends and I sparked off the idea I guess. We were talking about whether or not it makes things simpler by knowing these scientific reasons behind love. You know, if it makes it easier to understand or complicates things further. Some of them believe that by knowing what it is, then it'd be easier for us to control our emotions somehow. I don't quite believe in that though, because I see it as a way to make everything even more complicated. I mean, without knowing what love really was in the past, it made it so special and delicate somehow, and it kinda makes you want to work for it. Knowing the scientific reasons behind it, you start to wonder if what you are feeling is really what you are feeling, and not just some chemical reaction in your head, equivalent to that of adding baking powder to vinegar. It's not that I doubt what I am feeling, but it's just that knowing it doesn't make things better at all, if you ask of me. Making love simpler makes people not want to work harder to make it work. If we are all going to accept that it is just some chemical reactions in our head that could be somewhat replicated in a laboratory, then what is the value in that, you know? 

I refuse to believe that love is all about chemical reactions. I suppose I can acknowledge the fact that it helps our brains to register certain emotions. But you still need that special someone to trigger those emotions at the end of the day. You cannot grab anybody off the streets and expect that person to fall in love with you and vice versa, it just doesn't work that way all the time. I just feel that if love remains as this mythical and complexed thing in life, then it motivates me more to discover it, to maintain it, to hold it more delicately, and with care. Knowing that it is just the brain at work cheapens its value, and it makes you incompetent somehow. It is as if you'd just let the brain do all the work, all the hormones to be fired up. Just leave it to the touching and the hugging, the hormones will work their magic. What about the connection that you build with your partner, or with your friends? What about the kind of love that isn't romantic in nature, but between friends and family? The article almost never talks about those kind of love, perhaps science isn't big enough to answer all of life's questions?