Have you ever been in love? If your answer is “Yes”, ask yourself: “Was I truly in love, or did I call that intense and powerful feeling I had for someone ‘love’ in order to name it?” Perhaps somebody you admired appeared before you tasted the sublime emotion called love. However, your admiration passed before you could savor it fully. In that case, you have not experienced love itself, but its illusion. That illusion must have felt so sweet that you elevated your relationship – with each other, in what today might be called a “toxic” dynamic – under the guise of love. In reality, what you felt was not love; perhaps once you felt a strong almost love-like emotion, but it came and went. Once that feeling faded, what remained was attachment to your routine – being used to that person’s presence in your life. You cannot recall what life was like without them. At this point, it is no longer love; it is resistance to change.
So, is love merely transient? Did Majnun throw himself into desert because of a fleeting affection? Love is like a sea whose waves never cease. If you are ready to be swept by these waves, let us move to the next paragraph.
The purpose of this essay is to examine love through scientific perspective; then through the Iranian film Khoda Nazdik Ast (God is Close), it will explore whether love is truly a fleeting lapse of reason or whether it carries a deeper meaning beyond common understanding. Thus, we intend to approach the truth behind this powerful emotion from both the lenses of reason and heart.
Scientific Perspective
Imagine a medication that you take regularly. Every day, you receive the same dosage, and as your immune system develops tolerance to it, the dosage is gradually increased under your doctor’s guidance. It takes time before you begin to feel the effects of the medicine. Later, your dependence on it is gradually diminished through a controlled reduction of the dosage. However, if you act impatiently and take it repeatedly in short intervals to feel its effects immediately, it becomes not a remedy but a burden for you.
The difference between love and affection lies in their nature: Affection grows and develops over time, is enduring, and requires effort, making it stronger than love. Love, however, is a storm that precedes affection. It overwhelms you, driving you to the brink of losing your mind. Indeed, this is so because you act with your emotions rather than your reason, often impulsively.
The saying “to be badly in love” is not merely a subjective expression; fMRI studies have shown that it reflects an objective neural phenomenon. In the brain of someone in love, the amygdala – a structure responsible for processing emotions – partially loses its functionality. The amygdala triggers fight-or-flight responses in the face of danger, pushing us to confront or avoid threatening situations. Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex, located in the front of the brain, governs decision-making, social evaluation, planning, and impulse control – it is the seat of rational thought.
The “mad courage” experienced by someone in love – the feeling of being more confident than usual – stems from this neural pattern. Who would not want unlimited confidence and fearless boldness? Neuroscientific researches show that love produces effects in the brain similar to those of MDMA (ecstasy). Just as a user repeatedly seeks the drug and needs higher doses as tolerance develops, a person in love is not addicted to the other individual but to the intense feelings the relationship generates. This is why unrequited love can seem purer and more sincere, while marriages or long-term relationships may gradually fade. When the reality does not align with the feeling you created in your mind, the power of that extraordinary feeling fades in your eyes.
On The Film “God is Close”
Yunus Emre’s phrase, “I love the created for Creator’s sake”, may appear concise but it conceals profound truth. Falling in love with a person – essentially, loving what the Creator has made – is, in a sense, an illusion of love. The Iranian film God is Close illustrates this insight.
The story follows Rıza, a young man considered somewhat irrational by his village but in truth he is simply naive – thinking in a childlike way, guided by his heart. When the main road is damaged by floods, Rıza helps villagers by transporting them on his motorcycle. During this time, Leyla arrives as the village teacher, and Rıza falls madly in love with her. He takes it upon himself to escort her to school daily. The film carefully traces the transition from metaphorical, worldly love to divine love, showing Rıza’s affection for Leyla with a single, delicate, yet powerful scene.
In the classroom, the windows are painted with children’s white drawings, except for a tiny area where a child’s paint has peeled off, revealing the bare glass. Viewers who watch with their hearts will notice that this small space represents the child’s heart. After taking Leyla to the school, Rıza observes her lessons daily through this tiny peeled spot, symbolizing his childlike, pure love for her. Yet this love – like that of Leyla and Majnun – is impossible. This is because Leyla is engaged and soon leaves the village after getting married.
Rıza falls into despair at her departure, experiencing what the ancients called being “Majnun”. It takes him a long time to recover, eventually being taken to a shrine. There, he dreams and turns from a worldly love toward divine love. He realizes that his love for Leyla is a path leading him to eternal, divine love. Eventually, when Leyla returns hoping to converse with him, he does not wish to see her. He now seeks the timeless and eternal one.
Rıza’s words unveiled not the ephemeral passions of this world, but the eternal Divine Love, giving form to what had remained invisible: “I am looking for another Leyla. One that no one can take from me, whom I can speak with whenever I want, who is closer to me than anything else, and whom, if you love, you will need no one else.”
Such love guides a person toward the eternal, whereas modern cultural portrayals of love seem transient and illusory. This leads to the question: Is it fair to equate Rıza’s sacred love with the Bihter-Behlül passion, which legitimizes betrayal under the guise of love
Reference
Fisher, H.E., Aron, A., & Brown, L.L. (2005). Romantic love: An fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493(1), 58-62.
Yunus Emre. (2004). Divan (M. Kaplan, Ed.). Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları.
Vazirian, A (Director). (2006). Khoda Nazdik Ast [Allah Yakındır] [Film]. Iran.