'A Little Romance'

Neuroscientists studying the early stages of romantic love have found that it activates the same brain regions as cocaine, as religious ecstasy, as the mystical states reported by contemplatives across traditions. The same dopaminergic pathways. The same cascade of oxytocin, norepinephrine, serotonin. The body cannot distinguish, chemically, between falling in love and transcendence. They appear to be the same event.

This raises the question the mystics have always asked and the scientists keep arriving at: what if love is not a feeling that happens inside the brain, but a contact point between the individual and something larger? What if the chemistry is the instrument, not the source? What if falling in love is the body's way of briefly touching what it is always reaching for?

A little romance. Enough to remember what touching something real feels like.

This is for the woman who still believes in the real thing.