Three weeks ago, we defined what love was and also whipped together an illustration of it in the form of an axis. Wasn't that nifty?! But we only briefly went over causes and effects. Initially, I was going to go over all that here, but for now, I opted to stick to what we'll call the "Happiness Effect". Creative naming, isn't it?
We're all happy when we spend time with our loved ones, and whenever we can, we seek out opportunities to pursue that happiness with them. We go out and get lattes, play a game, or plan out events and projects together. Happiness, in its own right, is an addictive high that we actively pursue, and an even greater one when we can accomplish it with another person. But like any other high, is there a danger presented here merely by wanting to be happy with our loved ones? Possibly.
Let's do an experiment. Place a small, helpless child in an empty room. Observe how he perceives his current situation as dull and unexciting. Give a toy for him to play with and continue watching. See how content he is? Now be the cruel monster that you are and pry it away from his hands and smash it to pieces in front of him. Now see how he's in tears? Isn't that fascinating?
What's important to note in the observations of our experiment was the change in behavior in relation to the introduction and removal of the toy. From happy to sad, yes? Wrong. That's not important. I told you to observe his behavior before introducing the toy to the child but you obviously weren't paying attention. The child was bored and relatively neutral in emotion before the toy. The whole point of the experiment was to notice how when you smashed his happiness to pieces along with the toy (you sadistic monster), he became sad instead of returning to his neutral emotional state. This is true for any situation when love in someone's life has come under siege. But why is this so? It's because sadness and happiness are like two ends of a simple gravitational pendulum.
Real quickly, a simple gravitational pendulum is a weight on the end of a massless cord suspended from a pivot, without friction. When given an initial push, it will swing back and forth at a constant amplitude. It's this constant amplitude that takes effect between happiness and sadness. Take a look at this pendulum:
In it, we have two sides, happiness (yellow shade) and sadness (blue shade). The initial push on the weight is the introduction of love. When that happens, it swings into the yellow shade. The amount of happiness that comes from love determines just how hard the push was, and thus, how far the weight swings into the yellow shade. At the point where love is threatened, the weight will then swing into the blue shade with the exact same amplitude. When we lose someone not so incredibly dear to us, we are not so incredibly devastated by the loss. It's a good rule of thumb for realizing just how much or how little you loved someone after a soured relationship.
Keep in mind that this effect is not exclusive to losing your loved one. It also occurs when someone we love hurts us in some way. The greater we love someone, the greater damage they can potentially inflict. This is due to the amount of trust, secrets, and the pieces of our mind we impart from ourselves, turned around and used as a weapon against us. Basically, the love we give can be used against us.
All in all, the point of this topic is just to act as a reminder that when you're feeling torn, you are only subconsciously thinking of all the wonderful moments you had that gave you a smile and it's time to pursue them again.
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