On the Vectors of Love

On a recent flight I rewatched The Adjustment Bureau, the film loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s story “Adjustment Team.” The premise: the hero is destined, by the design of “the Chairman,” to become president, and the woman he falls for by sheer chance is meant to become a great choreographer. But if they stay together, their trajectories bend: he ends up a corporate functionary, she a dance teacher at a children’s school. A special team of “fate adjusters” does everything it can to keep them apart, all for the greater good. The two resist, and… I won’t spoil it.

The film got me thinking that not all that glitters is gold, and not all feelings are equally good for us.

Love, passion, desire — sung for centuries: in myths, in poetry, in legends, on film. Yet for all their beauty, such feelings are a double-edged weapon. They are forces equally capable of building and destroying. For love, empires were built and cities razed, states redrawn, wars started and ended.

Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader out of his wish to save Padmé’s life. Romeo and Juliet died because their feelings outran their common sense. Heracles performed his twelve labors trying to atone for a madness sent upon him by Hera’s jealousy. And in the end, even Harry Potter survived only because his mother loved him more than her own life.

Love can turn a hero into a monster. And a monster into a human being.

When the feeling sweeps over us, it’s worth asking: which way are we moving? Are we rising or falling? Are we doing good or causing harm? How do the people around us change? How does the quality of our life change? What have we built?

I don’t believe “love” can excuse degradation — least of all the erosion of values, ethics, morals. Most likely it’s something else by then: passion, attraction, dependency, the patching over of inner complexes and old wounds. To me, a love that doesn’t make us better is more an elaborate form of suffering, disguised under similar hormones.

Children? Yes, children change a great deal. But one couple conceives a child in a drunken haze, while another prays for a pregnancy for years. Either way, a child is no reason to live in hell. In toxic unions, children only learn the patterns of unhappiness.

It matters to see yourself “before” and “after.” Love is a vector. It can point up or down. The middle is probably the most frightening of all: a “zombie state” with no vivid signals and no conclusions.

Here’s to looking honestly at our lives and the direction they’re heading, in relationships and outside them. To not “hiding behind” love if it isn’t making us happier, kinder, wiser! ❤️