We tend to become infatuated a lot more than we realize. If you stop to look for them, you'll find the symptoms of infatuation throughout your day. Craving a certain food, brightening up when a specific song comes on the radio. Most of us think of infatuation in terms of tragic Shakespearean affairs, or unrequited love, but it's usually much more mundane. So again, what is it that causes these feelings of "rightness" that we experience?
I'm typing this from a new gadget (another infatuation of mine, gadgets). A small 10" net-book that I just had to have. The first accessory that I picked out was a cover "skin". Confronted with literally dozens of choices on a particular eBay seller's page, I let my eye just wander down the page of thumbnail pictures, hoping that something would catch my eye.
Along about 3/4 of the way down the page, my gaze was seized by a choice that took me all of half a second to decide upon. Oh, I continued to peruse the remainder of the offerings, because we humans are a greedy lot and I couldn't take the chance that there was another, better, choice. However, I kept coming back to the first one and without much real thought, purchased it.
It wasn't until a few days later when I received an email from the seller, that I went back to look it over again, and stopped to think about the decision. Now maybe it was because it was the first one that caught my eye and I had somehow imprinted upon it (another of my favorite ponderings, the imprinting phenomena), or because it somehow spoke to me on a visceral level, either way, it just felt... right.
It's an odd graphic, a drawing of a fish. Not a representation of any fish I've ever seen and not one I am likely to ever see in person. Sort of a cross between a caricature of a fish and a psychotic rendering of someone's idea of one of those strange, deep sea pelagics that National Geographic loves to display. Bizzare fish that can only be found miles down in the darkest parts of the ocean. Not at all majestic nor cuddly in turn. Rather disturbing actually, nightmarish in fact, if it weren't for our twenty-first century immunity to things grotesque. I'm sure that the artist intended it to be comical in it's Hogarthian ferocity, bulging eyes and sharp jagged teeth, yet rendered with an overall air of absurdity.
So what does this say about me? Obviously, I am not alone, or there wouldn't be such a choice so readily posted. Then I went back and perused the other offerings. I began to notice a pattern in many of the others. Faeries, some quite evil looking, done in an almost anime style that would look perfectly at home in a teenage goth girl's bedroom. Grinning skulls surrounded by flowers and hearts, wearing little top hats, poised on the page next to unicorns and kittens playing with balls of yarn.
Do we seek out the things that we fear the most in an attempt to come to terms with those fears? Is it an effort to surround ourselves with things that remove us from our day-to-day doldrums? Or, perhaps we seek out those things that allow us to express the disturbing thoughts that lay just beneath the surface of our civilised demeanor? An effort to relieve our genetically inherent bestiality in socially acceptable ways?
Either way, I know I'm going to love my purchase, but I wonder.... Should I be more careful the next time I react on a whim? The next time I see a woman across a room that quickens my blood and draws more than passing attention? Maybe the dark confines of our minds aren't the best place from which to trust life's decisions...
