Cupid and his sense of…. humour

How often has it happened to us that, when meeting someone, we have started to feel our stomachs shrink, or have had the impression that, maybe, at last!, we have found that person we were looking for? And how often have we reproached ourselves, when everything is over, what were we thinking of when falling in love with that person? This time we shall not describe the neurotransmitters involved, nor the chemical reactions or the hormones that seem to have gone mad for the occasion. Tradition has provided us with a very funny character named Cupid, furnished with little wings that allow him to walk amongst us inadvertedly, and busy with his arrows, blind-eyed, playing hazardously, pointing aimlessly, with huge probabilities of getting it wrong…

Our Cupid is very conscious of the fact that, in order to start a relationship, it is necessary that we feel a certain I don’t know what or why, that allows him to keep throwing from different angles, distances and speeds, mainly during the spring and summer seasons when the lack of clothes allow his arrows to hit whichever goal he chooses. He must really have a lot of fun, for he doesn’t stop practising at all…

Innocently, we grow up thinking that this sweet angel knows what he is dealing with, and we trust him all along until, after several failed tries, we have to start getting the arrows off our hearts, heal the wounds, look up and around, only to realize the winged guy’s confused fluttering.

Our next step, if we want to keep involved in this play called “love”, is to allow him to continue with his game, but this time consciously knowing that he may very probably fail. That means: knowing that when the stomach shrinks doesn’t necessarily mean that we have found the love of our lives; being able to get rid of unwanted arrows, and to analyze which part of our self was hit, in order to understand if it was love or something else. We can even be able to whisper in his ear to move his bow in some other direction. And some other times we may desperately call him thinking that he has forgotten about us or doesn’t know where we are. However, he keeps playing his game, blind-eyed… and ear-plugged.

New technologies have allowed him to expand his business very successfully. Previouslly, a few arrows per person/life, would have been enough. Nowadays we are keeping him really busy and stressed, as we demand and expect from him to be accurate in his game. In order to increase his probabilities of getting it right at any given time, he must throw more, many more, arrows which, on the other hand, means that we have to be more alert, dynamic, agile and ready to play. We guess that Cupid must be really enjoying himself with such a challenge: more arrows, more people… may mean more medals for him.

Although, when giving it a second thought, what love would it be with a Cupid getting it always right at the first try? We would probably find him absolutely boring. In fact, Cupid just keeps pushing us to play. Whatever we do afterwards, is none of his businesses…

Mila Cahue for MeeticAffinity

If you want to read the article in Spanish/Para leer el artículo en español:

https://milacahue.com/2011/06/06/cupido-y-su-sentido-del-amor/