the curious case of being attached

Joel, played by Jim Carrey in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, once questioned himself,

"Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?"

The movie was not my instant favorite - but it grows with me. Like reading JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Or listening to Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool.

I am really not fond of pouring a definition towards a vast array of feelings into that word, 'love'. I guess it's more of an umbrella emotion. We feel something familiar and we call it love. We associate stuff to our own definition of what love is. I wrote about this in another post, but just to state that I remain agnostic towards this whole definition of that L-word.

But if I could somewhat link my feelings to Joel, I would say I do easily feel a strong emotional attachment towards people. A little too easy, a little too fast. What it takes is just a good conversation. Be it about music, movies, books, places... If I connect with you, I connect with you. It is as if my brain suddenly turns on its engines to build such a strong, bonded, emotional wires with you. And... There's no turning back.

[Joni Mitchel's Help Me playing in the background]

Help me
I think I'm falling
In love too fast
It's got me hoping for the future
And worrying about the past

Perhaps not so much on worrying about the past - but the future? Oh, I'm one optimistic fellow when it comes to that.

But, why?

Part of me rationalizes this by saying it is not that often I can connect on an intellectual, emotional level with someone. Hence, in the scarcity principle, I will automatically attach to it whenever I find one. Which is true. But another part of me also tries to wake me up from time to time, that a three-hour late-night conversation, no matter how great it was, could also just be that. In another word, the connection my brain tried to develop, might work then. But it might not last once distance comes in, or once the talk was over. And it could be because of countless different reasons, one of them, maybe the scarcity principles don't work in their way. They meet people that connect with them on a daily basis. So you know, what's so special about that? Or, it also could be just me that has this too elaborated picture of someone that might just come from me - while the reality might differ.

Yes, all of this is merely an elaborate rant after an attachment left unreturned.

It's not at all so strange, in my opinion. Let's try to steal lines from The National's Pull of You,

I know I can get attached and then unattached
To my own versions of others
My view of you comes back and drops away

But you know, somehow, I don't mind that. It's still a beautiful feeling to have. I easily admire people, got all curious and I would really want to know what's inside their minds. It's intriguing, you know, to be interested in people. They always, always know something you don't.

Anyway, let's close this with a beautiful song by Big Thief, UFOF, one of the best tracks in 2019 (yes, in my opinion) and what Adrianne Lenker, the vocalist, talk of it:

"Everything is fleeting and passing and impermanent in life. Relationships, people, our finite physical forms… so we’re in this process of letting go of our own attachments to our physical forms and to the people we love, and… basically everything. Life is like this one big process of letting go. That’s what makes it so sweet, is that it is finite, that it is passing, so you can just really come into the present.”