283. Greek love

According to the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (as written by Plato in his Symposium), when the Earth was still young, human beings had a very different form than they do today. Each human being, he said, was comprised of two persons stuck together, so that each one had two faces and four arms, and they moved about on four legs by doing cartwheels. Moreover, instead of coming in the two sexes people do today, these proto-humans came in three varieties, each one with two sets of reproductive organs: male-male, female-female, and male-female. Despite having to move around like Vitruvius Man, they were content with this arrangement and prospered, for as far as they knew they were perfect.

Sooner or later the gods began to fear the humans' strength in this form, and they considered their options. Destroying humanity was not a desirable solution, so Zeus devised a plan whereby they might halve the humans' power so that they may never be able to challenge the gods, and at the same time create twice as many people to worship them: He took up his lightning bolts and split each human being in half, right down the middle.

What Zeus did not predict, however, was that instead of spending their time in worship, human beings now spent every waking moment in search of their missing halves. Inside each one was a primal memory of oneness that his present body alone could not fulfill; so he cried out for that other who would complete him body and soul, and tried to join with the possible candidates when he found them. That was the birth of love, Aristophanes said, and physical desire: A desire which is, at its heart, nothing more than the need to be, literally, re-made whole.