Falling in love is not love: what do we celebrate on February 14

At first glance, yes. Falling in love is naturally associated in our minds with youth and bright feelings – admiration, tenderness, the desire to please the chosen one or chosen one. Hence the idea of ​​valentines with words of love, as well as obligatory flowers and desirable touching gifts.

And yet, the Russian language sensitively distinguishes between infatuation and love. It is no coincidence that the Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language, unsurpassed in the accuracy of its formulations, edited by D.N. Ushakov, connects falling in love with sensual attraction on the one hand and fascination on the other.

Falling in love is an impulse, a temporary (most often short-lived) state, an emotional outburst. Metaphors for it have long been found – intoxication, sunstroke. And this is one of the reasons why it seems strange to me the need to congratulate the most wonderful and beloved husband, with whom we have lived side by side for many years, on Valentine’s Day. In the statement that we are in love with each other, I hear an unpleasant shade of falsehood.

Falling in love, of course, does not come down to a sensual impulse. After all, even children are capable of falling into this state. How to forget that adult neighbor in the communal apartment, whom you look at with silent adoration in the hallway while your grandmother is getting you ready for kindergarten, and he laces his shoes so uniquely well! By the way, maybe a child’s love is its purest example: the child doesn’t want anything from the object of his adoration – he just doesn’t know what to want yet.

Falling in love is not equal to sensuality also because it is not always directed at a person. I think everyone knows such an amazing phenomenon as falling in love with a situation.

Exactly 40 years ago I had the opportunity to go potato farming. Our entire considerable course was thrown into harvesting a half-ruined state farm near Moscow. And almost every evening in our little room – the leader’s ward of the pioneer camp, where the four of us lived, about ten more people gathered. We were resting after hard and meaningless work (the magnificent potatoes we had collected were destined to rot in the vegetable warehouse, as was the custom in the planned Soviet economy); having obtained household supplies, they compensated for the meagerness of the government dinner; they talked, laughed, sang with a guitar, and sometimes even went on foot several kilometers in the middle of the night, to the Spaso-Borodinsky Monastery, where one could see the real grave of Lieutenant Rzhevsky.

And then the warm September ended, the first frosts hit, and the faculty authorities decided to send all the girls to Moscow and leave the boys at the state farm for another two weeks. They were allowed to take us to Mozhaisk, from where we left by train. The train did not leave for a long time, the girls crowded in the vestibule and waved to the guys standing on the platform. On that day, there was probably no more roaring carriage on the entire railway.

It would seem that the return from the potatoes should have been followed by numerous weddings or at least the long existence of a company of best friends. Nothing like this! Yes, we studied together for several more years, and we are still friends with some of them to this day. But the charm of the situation dissipated. Everyone’s love for everyone disappeared. By the way, when I arrived several decades later at the Spaso-Borodinsky Monastery, I did not find the grave of Lieutenant Rzhevsky…

You can fall in love with an idea, religious, moral, political. Isn’t this form of love, for example, revolutionary obsession? This is exactly what Nekrasov wrote about in the 19th century, mourning the early departure of Dobrolyubov:

Consciously worldly pleasures

You rejected, you kept purity,

You did not quench the thirst of your heart;

As a woman, you loved your homeland…

So why are we given love? In a person, in a situation, in an idea, in a profession? A crush that may never turn into love. It seems to me like a kind of psychological exercise, a kind of set of exercises for training various groups… not muscles, of course, but emotions.

The state of being in love has many advantages. It invigorates, stimulates, makes you jump above your head. The image of “getting the Moon from the sky” reflects the energetic power of a being in love. Among my friends there are no people who, under the influence of feelings, would accomplish feats or great discoveries, but I know at least two men who received a higher education only for the sake of the woman they loved – after many years of unsuccessful attempts.

Falling in love is an important lesson in selflessness. Someone who is truly passionate about another person does not spare any effort or time. The feeling can encourage us to learn a foreign language or, without understanding anything about classical music, to purchase a subscription to the conservatory and, what is especially valuable, be able to never fall asleep there.

Let’s not forget about such a magical property of falling in love as the bringing together of worlds, the birth of sweet moments of mutual understanding. A man in love can spend hours listening to a woman’s unintelligible babbling and answering strange questions about what color scarf suits this dress best. And the woman in love almost completely learns to rejoice at the victory of his favorite football team. If a couple in love gets married, the scarf-football harmony is unlikely to last long. In real life, it is easier for us to brush each other aside than to sacrifice precious minutes of our own lives to discuss issues that seem to us to mean nothing.

Falling in love is undoubtedly a source of inspiration. And no matter how much we quote Pushkin with ironic intonation: “Love has passed, the muse has appeared,” these words in fact do not refute, but affirm the poetic power of falling in love. Let the muse appear a little later. But if it weren’t for love, it probably wouldn’t have come at all.

But falling in love is by no means only moments of joy and victory. It is also an experience of unprecedented suffering and bitter humiliation. Because it is very often unrequited. And even in the case of reciprocity, one is usually more in love – or his rapture ends earlier. And if falling in love is a kind of intoxication, then it is quite expectedly followed by a painful hangover. Passion gives way to boredom, dedication gives way to resentment that efforts are not appreciated. How not to remember Lermontov’s coined formula:

Who knows, maybe those moments

What flowed at your feet,

I took away from inspiration!

What did you replace them with?

What is this if not the aftertaste of falling in love? And what if not an example of the most terrible injustice? After all, the one at whose feet the above-mentioned moments passed was unlikely to insist on this…

However, let the other side be heard:

Yesterday I was lying at my feet!

Equated with the Chinese state!

At once he unclenched both little hands, –

Life fell like a rusty penny!

This is Tsvetaeva – and also about the fading of love. About falling in love that never turned into love.

What do we celebrate on February 14th? Maybe nothing special at all. We simply take the opportunity to please those around us with gifts, creating, so to speak, the mood of the approach of spring. There are, of course, those who, by happy coincidence, are truly in love on this day and find a legitimate reason to attract attention to themselves. Not just giving flowers to a girl, but relying on the authority of St. Valentine. And for some, the holiday can help mend shaky relationships. Flowers, a valentine, perfume, a restaurant – and your wife thawed out, yesterday she reminded you of all the garbage that had not been taken out and all the dirty socks scattered around the house.

This is what is perhaps important. Valentine’s Day simulates a reality in which there are no dirty socks. This is the day of feeling triumphant in the fight against routine. A celebration of love outside of everyday life, small salaries, picky bosses and quarrelsome neighbors. Over the years, it becomes more and more difficult to believe in such things, and falling in love occurs less and less often. But this, it seems to me, should not depress us particularly. After all, over time, we, beaten by life, having lost the ability to fall in love recklessly, get the most important chance – to fall in love.