As difficult as it is to grasp the nature of a black hole
and its all-consuming gravity, Interstellar
(2014) also traces the powerful yet mysterious gravitational pull of human
love, including that utterly unfathomable condition we know as “being in love.”
We fall in love, which is an
expression that presupposes gravity. Yet such all-consuming attachment may not
even in principle have as its object our species itself. Even falling in love
may be dangerous—just look at Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
“You have attachments, even without a family. I can promise
you, the yearning to be with other people is powerful,” Cooper explains to Dr.
Mann in the film to justify getting back to Earth as soon as possible. “That
emotion is the foundation of what makes us human—not to be taken lightly,” the
father of two adds. We are indeed social animals. Yet we don’t seem to be
hard-wired to feel an attachment for our species itself, as demonstrated by
humanity’s failure to keep global warming from potentially rendering our wise
species, homo sapiens, extinct. In fact, the film pits the yearning to be with
another person against the species’ very survival, suggesting that being in
love is very powerful indeed as well as possibly ruinous to the species.
Brand’s yearning for a man she is in love with places her in
a conflict of interest in giving her recommendation on which of two planets to
visit. “Love is powerful, observable,” she says. Here on Earth, we know that
being in love can lead people to make drastic life-choices that are irrational
by any other calculus. A person in love may decide to suddenly walk away from years
of work in a field without even a threat of regret in order to be with the other person in another city. A
person whose love is unrequited may abruptly change a daily routine or even
move to get some distance from the other person. In addition to hopefully being
“cured” of being in love with him or her as soon as possible (though time
usually takes it time as a thickener of sorts), ending the fierce, unrelenting
pain of the rejection is also of high priority. The continued yearning without
its object and the hurt from the rejection can be agonizing if the person loves
deeply.
Brand describes being in love as being profound. “Maybe it’s
some evidence, artifact of a higher dimension we can’t consciously perceive,” she
explains to justify her planetary recommendation being consistent with seeing
the man with whom she fell in love many years earlier. Love is the one thing we
can perceive that transcends the dimensions of time and space. “I’m drawn
across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade, who I know is
probably dead,” she confesses. It is as if a worm-hole exists between the two
souls, rendering their connection as immediate in spite of the oceans of space
between them.
Drawing on Kant, I wonder whether being in love distorts
both space and time in how they appear to us. The time spent with a beloved
passes must quicker, at least initially, than does the time spent apart when
the heart yearns to be at one with the other. The area where the beloved lives
and works takes on a drastically different meaning and value, both in itself
and relative to other places. This special “bump” may even be immune from the
waning effects of time due to its own warp.
Finality, such as in the beloved cutting the person still in
love off from any further contact and
meaning it, is inherently at odds with the love’s innate ability to massage
time and space. Particularly a person who falls deeply in love with another person has difficulty in finality at
such depth. It is as if the constructed wall violates fate itself, if not the
very nature of the love. Yet a person in love can be wrong in sensing fate
being at work; the existential feeling in “falling head over heels” in
love—that such loving comes out of one’s very core being—is not the sort of
thing that a person can turn off (or on).
To someone who has never been in love, all of this must seem
like something in another galaxy. Even to a person who has fallen in love but
is not presently in love with the person in love with him or her, it is easy to
dismiss the other person’s condition as insignificant or even crazy. It can
thus be easy to walk away without any guilt for what the other person is to go
through emotionally.
“Maybe we should trust it even though we can’t understand
it,” Bland says as she advocates going to the planet where her beloved may
still be alive. But should we? If being in love distorts time and space by
means of its relentless gravity, then is it wise for other people and the person in love to trust the
emotion? He or she may be wrong about fate; the beloved may not be “the one”
after all. Indeed, “the one” may actually be cruel, all too comfortable with
finality.
Astonishingly, the person in love may still yearn for the
underlying good in the other person even as the beloved is bent on inflicting
so much hurt that he or she will never have to see the person again. A person
in love willing to risk such rejection to work things out demonstrates just how
much he or she values love above all else. It is also likely that a person
willing to inflict a maximum pain to be rid of such a person forever
demonstrates just how little he or she values love itself. Lest it be concluded
that a black hole of sorts resides at his or her core being, falling in love
may also be quite selfish. Faced with a powerful, relentless yearning for one
person, a person in love is hardly unmoved by what he or she wants. Such love,
as well as such hate, may not be trustworthy, and may even be dangerous.
Perhaps our species would have evolved better had we the ability to fall in
love with our species rather than individuals.
