July 27, 2021
Me: Ok Lord, what do you want me to write about?
The Lord: Me
He loves it when I write to Him, write about Him, and just when I write. Lately, I’ve been filling my life with other tasks, and He keeps redirecting me... Write, Elizabeth. Write of me, of life, of love...
Me: As you wish.
Is Love a Choice?
“I never really believed in magical love,” my friend said, “until I fell into it.”
Have you ever fallen in love? In conversation recently, my friends and I came to the realization that to fall in love is not a choice. In fact, if it were a choice, it would cease to be love.
I intend to defend this position, since as a Catholic, we are often told: “love is a choice.” I do actually believe that. So if falling in love is not a choice, but love is, what does that mean?
Now, I want to make a distinction before I go any further. There is a difference - impossible to describe though I will try - between falling in love and infatuation.
If you have been in love, then you know what I mean without my trying to describe it to you. And if, so far, you’ve only experienced infatuation, then no description can truly communicate the concept of love.
Some Clarifications:
Neither love nor infatuation is a good or a bad thing, in and of itself. Both partake of goodness, and both are a necessary and beautiful aspect of the human experience. Both can also be perverted. But love is higher - in the order of being and goodness - than infatuation.
Infatuation engages the senses and emotions, driving out every other reality.
Love engages the entire person: mind, body, and soul, and leaves command of the emotions.
Infatuation makes the person selfish, even if she doesn’t mean to be, for she is so full of the other person and the good feelings she’s experiencing, that she has a hard time seeing other people.
Love brings the person out of herself and able to see people, beauty, and good things in abundance, for she sees suddenly the futility of little things, and begins to engage with reality on a deeper level.
An infatuated person sees their beloved in everything. Anything, even the littlest thing, reminds them of their beloved.
A person in love looks for aspects of their beloved in things of quality. They seek to go deeper into beauty, goodness, and truth. Knowing that their beloved is a thing of precious quality, they seek for themes of precious quality in all around them.
Infatuation either leads to love, or dies away into oblivion.
Love endures, even if it changes. It either changes it’s tone into a lasting affection, fades away into a pleasant memory, or else it lasts until ‘death do us part.’
Infatuation does not change the person, other than to bring sometimes transitory happiness and stress.
Love, on the other hand (while not automatically making him a better person), calls the lover to a higher virtuous standard. He suddenly recognizes and adores virtue, and has the powerful motivation to be a better person for the sake of his beloved. Love transforms.
The Choice
So why is it that although love is a choice, falling in love is not?
To be ‘in love’ is not a choice, but choice is still involved. When I and my friends have fallen in love, we noticed the common theme of Resistance. Every one of us resisted the idea of accepting that we were ‘in love.’ To fall in love is unnerving for the very fact that we do not choose to fall into it. Would you choose to fall into a pit? No. To fall is an unsettling feeling. It makes your stomach drop, your heart pound, your life change direction (literally - we go from traveling horizontally to vertically). For this reason, the expression ‘falling in love’ is very appropriate, for it is an unwilling fall.
To be in love is the choice. It is to accept Joseph Campbell’s Call to Adventure, and to embrace that life is about to take an unexpected and potentially disastrous turn. To be in love is to accept that there is a higher reality in life than oneself. It is to recognize beauty and goodness, and to seek after deeper understandings of these realities. To be in love is to ascend in mind and soul.
In God’s inneffible wisdom, He has allowed us to experience this call through the presence and companionship of another person in romantic love. He could have left us with Him alone, for He is, after all, Love itself. But in the Garden, he decreed that it was not good for man to be alone, and so he created a helper fit for him, and in Adam’s moment of awakening to see Eve, he was struck into declaring his love and his joy. It was Adam and Eve’s call to grow deeper into God through knowing and discovering the other.
“Do not arouse, nor awaken love, until it so desires.” This awakening is outside of our control. It seems as though the love itself is a living entity, coming to life and fluttering outside the doors of our hearts, begging for us to let him in.
Will we choose to let him in?
My friend, when he spoke of falling in love, of now believing in magical love, was speaking of this total self-effacing love. It makes one want to live forever with the person, if they can, or else die to prove their love. It is the celebrated love of Romeo and Juliet, of Victoria and Albert, of Christ and the Church. It happens in a moment - in one instant of existence - and it changes the trajectory of one’s entire life. One instant, we are our regular self, trying to figure out who we are and what we’re meant for in this life, and the next: everything else is eclipsed. Nothing small can enter our world any longer. Not, that is, unless we choose to deny our call and shut the door on beauty, truth, and goodness. For this arousal, this awakening of love, is in truth a call to the highest realities of life: to enter into the Love of God himself, who is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.
This love may lead to marriage, or it may be a stepping stone on the journey. But I encourage you that when you fall into love and you open your door to let it in, you have done no harm. You have chosen beauty, truth, and goodness, and if you invite the Lord in, you will ascend to know Him in his Higher Places. You will ascend to see the Lord in his house of Glory, where He waits for you.
Do not despair of ‘magical’ love. Do not seek to arouse it. And most of all, when it comes, do not deny it entrance.