Lover – Parts Per Billion

Love is in the Brain

The heart always gets credited for the feelings of love but it is the brain which plays the most significant role. Neuroscientists have made attempts to interpret the emotions of love by closely studying the events in the brains of lovers. A study in neuroscience shows how acts of expressing love through embracing, kissing, and conversing about common experiences positively influences our brains. It also indicates why and how men may feel embraces deeper and more emotional than women, how an emotional speech creates similar neural effects as the neural effects during kissing.

Neuroscience of the languages of love

Kiss, speech and embrace are the most common languages of love

Background – What is love? What is an emotion?

Emotions are one inseparable part of human life rather every living thing. They can be attributed as the response we generate for the interactions we have with our surrounding – a response to various stimuli. Responding to the events/ interactions is one important way of communication for living things. Out of these responses, physical responses are generally very easy to notice and interpret but at the same time the emotional responses are more complicated, sometimes difficult to even notice and interpret. Body language mostly gives away the what’s going in a person’s head, what they are thinking (like most of us have a tell when we are uncomfortable/ nervous or are lying). Understanding body language can give straightforward answers about person’s condition and personality but it is always difficult to gauge what exactly the person is feeling in given condition.

Love is one of the most important and at the same time the most exploited feelings we living things have. Love is the feeling which we can connect with anything real and imaginary that is there in the universe (trust me, this is not inferred from the pop culture philosophy) There are more things to love than to hate for everyone of us. For the sake of generalization, love brings in the comfort, safety and hope for the survival of every species. Love for certain things can push the individual to do something extraordinary – good (because it can create purpose irrespective of the situations and challenges in life) or bad (that is exactly why love is the most exploited emotion, you can make people do wrong things just for the sake of love).

Love language

Even though love is the most general emotion all of us have (like love for something, some person, some song, some place, some season, some animal, love for everything); the love between couples – romantic couples remain always at the focal point. The love between couples is not important because pop culture, poets, painters, singers, saints mentioned it repeatedly everywhere; it is important because it is what makes our lives less artificial. The love romantic couple can have, affects the future of society in every possible and productive way – it also ensures diversity – randomness in species. As we are highly expressive and responsive species, communication is the most important part of our life especially the love life. When two people from different backgrounds come together in the name of love it becomes very important as how they express their love for each other. Today we call it “the love language”. Some couples love to talk a lot with each other, some like to sit in silence together, some always feel cuddly, some would be always staring into each other’s eyes, some would travel together, some like to cook together or for other, some like to eat together, some are always pulling pranks, some would peel orange for the others, some would send flowers, some would be writing poems, singing songs, some would always fight (yes…, you read that and accepted it). You get it; every couple has their own (sometimes weird) love language and communicating in this certain language deepens the relationship.

Brain vs heart – Neuroscience of love

Even though heart has been attributed to the origin of the feeling of love due to various reason, its original job is to just pump the blood. Nothing interesting happens in the heart of a person in love than in their brain. Brain surely is the epicenter for the study of love and how we feel when we are in love. Just like love, our brain is the most complicated thing we are yet to understand fully. Neuroscientists are always trying to figure out what generates certain set of emotions and responses. Love is one such important emotion which is also an attractive subject for them. Its association with every aspect of our life, its complexity and simplicity at the same time has always attracted scientists who are trying to understand human behavior. (love hasn’t spared the brainiacs too.)

Modern neuroscience is blurring the lines between the intangibility of emotions especially love and the tangible – physical parameters like electricity (synapse, wave-forms), chemicals (hormones, neurotransmitters). From providing shock to certain part of the brain to see which muscle it twitches to enabling the paralyzed people to walk again through brain implants, neuroscience has had many quantum leaps.

How does a neuroscientist interpret love?

I think every person who is in love can tell what it is but it will always have a touch of subjectivity, thus a neuroscientist is always the most qualified person to create an objective fact on the emotion of love.

Today we will see an interesting study in neuroscience about the emotions in romantic couples. Before going into the details and the conclusions of the study, it is important to roughly get the hold of some concepts neuroscientists used to interpret their results.

Our brain is made of approximately 100 billion neurons whose network is always firing some electrical signals to generate responses and create memories. The measurement of such electrical signals and their interpretation is important aspect of studying brain.

fMRI – functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

It is found that when there is a neural activation in brain, the blood flow increases in that region. This change in blood flow can be monitored using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

De-oxygenated hemoglobin in blood is paramagnetic (attracted by external magnetic field) and oxygenated hemoglobin in blood is diamagnetic (repelled by external magnetic field). Producing a strong magnetic field around brain and monitoring their interactions with the magnetic fields generated during blood flow are measured in MRI. Such measurements require bulky and specialized instruments with controlled conditions.

fMRI shows what part of brain gets activated from increased blood flow

fMRI machine is huge thus creates limited experimental environments

Electroencephalography (EEG) – it is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. It monitors the electrical signals from brain using electrodes on scalp instead of measuring the changes in magnetic fields. The EEG devices are now very lightweight and portable thus they have less influence on the neural activity of the subject under observation. The portability also widens the test environments for the subjects under observation.

EEG can be used to interpret the signals from the outer surface (cerebral cortex) of the brain as the electrodes are put on the scalp. It is difficult to understand what is happening inside the brain from the signals of EEG although they will always be interfering with the overall signals sensed by the electrode at the scalp.

An EEG system is highly portable to collect neural data

International 10-20 system – It is an internationally accepted template for putting electrodes proportionately on the scalp of head. This ensures homogeneous observations and reproducibility of the results during EEG. 10 and 20 refer to the percentage of the gap between the electrodes meaning the electrodes are placed at 10% or 20% of the total distance between front – back of the skull (called as nasion and inion respectively) or total left-right distance.

International 10-20 system to locate the electrodes of EEG system

A good, healthy person will show waves of certain frequencies according to their conditions. These frequencies are between 1 to 30 Hz and the amplitude varies between 20 to 100 micro volt. The frequencies are divided as follows:

Alpha waves – alpha waves have frequency between 8-12 Hz and are observed when a person is relaxed in a wakeful condition. These are mainly attributed to activity in parietal and occipital lobe of the brain. When a relaxed person opens their eyes, it is observed that their alpha activity reduces and beta activity increases. Alpha waves are produced when you’re awake but your mind is in a resting state.

Beta waves – beta waves have frequency above 12 till 30 Hz. Beta waves are associated with intense mental activity like doing some arithmetic calculations, making inferences from given data, being busy, focused on something. The frontal area of brain shows significant beta activity in such wakeful instances.

Gamma waves – these are the fastest brain waves with frequency between 30-80 Hz. They are attributed to deep thinking and state of high focus. Generally, people with high IQ show more gamma activity; lower gamma activity is attributed to memory and learning problems, short attention span.

Delta waves – delta waves are associated with frequencies between 0.5 – 4 Hz

Theta waves – theta waves are associated with frequencies between 4-7 Hz

Theta and delta waves are not observed in wakeful state. If delta and theta waves are observed in wakefulness then it indicates brain dysfunction.

Output wave-forms from the electrodes of an EEG system

Lateralization of brain – We have come across one misleading fact that we only use certain fraction/ percentage of our brain in routine activities. (the popular number is 5-20%) This popular but wrong fact could be attributed to the idea of lateralization of brain. (Sci-Fi movies have exploited this wrong fact already)

Generally, almost all areas of every healthy person’s brain are always active. But, certain cognitive functions or neural functions (like movement of body parts, thinking, calculating, watching, tasting) are associated to either of the hemisphere of the brain (left or right hemisphere). Although brain as a whole is always active, certain activities/ functions activate one hemisphere more that the another one. Simply put, there is difference in brain signals between right and left hemisphere during a cognitive function. This dominance of brain signal from one “side” shows lateralization of brain. One side will be more activated in brain for given activity.

Asymmetry indices (AI) – So, this heightened activity from one side of brain is measured by taking difference of the signal power of the brain waves from left and right hemisphere.

Increased asymmetry index indicates that the signals in right hemisphere are getting inhibited, restricted. Thus, left hemisphere especially left frontal activity in brain is increased.

Decreased asymmetry index means that the signals in left hemisphere are getting inhibited and thereby right hemisphere is more activated.

Simply put, more the asymmetry index more is the activity in left part of the brain.

There are two main theories on how our brain is lateralized. One is Valence Model (VM) and another is Right Hemisphere Hypothesis (RHH).

VM – According to valence model, every emotion has a valence meaning a tendency to be preferable – positive and rewarding or not preferable – negative and aversion inducing. The positive, rewarding emotions are processed in left hemisphere and negative, punishing emotions are processed in right hemisphere of the brain.

RHH – Right Hemispherical Hypothesis says that whatever may the emotions be – positive or negative, rewarding or punishing – all are processed in right hemisphere of the brain.

Neuroscientists are yet to reach a consensus on which of these two ideas are right. Certain observations are supported by VM and others are supported by RHH. It’s not about what is wrong and what is right, it is about which model explains given dataset better and predicts better.

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) – this is one of the chemicals – a neurotransmitter which inhibits/ blocks certain neural signals thereby is responsible for creating calmness. If GABA is released more, we feel calmer and more relaxed. The opposite effect i.e. restlessness, excitement is generated by glutamate. For a healthy brain balance between GABA and Glutamate is important.

*gamma*-aminobutyric acid – neurotransmitter of calmness

Glutamate is the main excitatory and GABA the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian cortex. The prescription drugs for reducing restlessness/ improving calmness ensure high levels of GABA in our central nervous system.

**Glutamic acid aka glutamate** – neurotransmitter of excitement

Now that we have understood certain basic ideas to understand the experiment, let us see how certain languages of love in romantic couples affect their neural responses.

The Experiment

The neuroscientists studied three conditions in romantic couples namely – speech, hug and kiss.

The participating romantic partners were asked to wear the EEG system to record the brain signal during the experiment. Scientists recorded a baseline – a neutral state for speech, hug and kiss. Then the emotional states were recorded through certain assigned tasks.

In neutral state for speech, one of the partners listened to a generic weather report, whereas in the emotional state for speech the partner listened to a recording of their partner reading an emotional shared life experience.

In neutral state for hugging/ embracing the partner hugged a pillow while the another being absent and in emotional embrace, they hugged each other.

In neutral state for kissing one partner kissed their hand and in emotional state the partners kissed each other.

Why this experimental setup is important?

According to the authors of this paper, most of the studies to understand the brain activities are always performed in controlled setup which conditions the brain signals in a set template. The observations may create certain insights but are less close to the reality as they were not observed in real life conditions. Authors claim that this method to actually measure the brain signals in real life scenarios creates more relevant, closer to real life dataset. The responses in such setup are more natural. That is why they claim this experiment having more “ecological validity”

The authors make a great attempt to understand the main and most preferred language of love in romantic couples i.e., kissing, embracing, speaking shared experiences. It will be really interesting to see what “flashes” we have when we are experiencing such events.

Observations – looking from a neuroscientist’s perspective

Following are the key observations authors present in this paper:

Participants were more positive after executing the behavioral tasks.
Brain gets lateralized during emotional processing.
High asymmetry index in front lobe electrodes was found during emotional kissing compared to neutral kissing. Researchers found high alpha AI during emotional (real/ organic) kissing than neutral (artificial) kissing baseline.
Found lower alpha AI during speech.
Higher AI in kissing and emotional speech.
Researchers didn’t find overall effects in alpha or beta for embracing. Only males showed higher beta AI in the embracing condition.

Conclusions

Pardon my oversimplification for the sake of understanding.

The first observation is the easiest to understand. Kissing, hugging, and telling a shared memory/ experience of love surely makes the romance to flourish more (duh!)
The lateralization of brain means that certain emotions are flagged in one of the hemispheres of the brain. It’s not like all the emotions activate only one side of the brain.
This one is interesting. High alpha asymmetry index during kissing means that left brain is more activated during kissing. The authors put forward that this is related to release of GABA molecules in right hemisphere which inhibit the neural signals thereby create a calming effect. Valence model says that left hemisphere processes positive and rewarding emotions. So, this observation shows that kissing surely creates a positive effect in the brain of the romantic couples. Higher left hemispherical activity is attributed to more positivity in a study. It is important observation of high alpha asymmetry because its opposite i.e., lower alpha activity is linked with suicidal tendencies in depression as observed in a study.
The authors found that the VM theory holds best to explain events in frontal part of the brain whereas the RHH theory can explain the posterior events in brain. That is exactly why low alpha AI in romantic/ emotional speech cannot be directly correlated negative emotions which the Valence Model says. Rather according to the RHH theory the speech invokes strong right hemispherical activity. The authors found an observation to link VM and RHH theories according to the regions of brain considered for discussion. Both theories are not completely wrong but are successful when implemented to specific region of the brain. Simply put, it is not just about preference to left or right hemisphere – it is also about whether the activity is in front or back portion of the brain.
High asymmetry indices during kissing and emotional speech show how strongly they affect the lovers. Emotional speech is as effective as kissing. (it’s like kissing your lover’s brain with your emotional words!)
This one is also one more interesting observation. As there are no significant effects in alpha or beta asymmetries during hugging activity, it means the hugging is less effective than kissing or emotional speech. But the authors present a catch here! They found a sex specific observation. It says, high beta AI in males during embracing. High beta AI is linked with increased emotional, cognitive processing. This means that men consider hugging more emotional than women. Women process hugging as a casual act but men consider it more thoughtful especially when they are hugging the existing and well-familiar female partner. Authors attribute this to the fact that women generally hug each other (female-female hug) more than men do (male-male hug).

What does this mean to common person?

The experiment authors performed was really interesting and was closer to the real-life conditions. If you want more interesting details on how what and why the experiment was designed in a certain way and how the results were interpreted, I have provided the link at the end. Going through this article puts front some really deep insights on how love, romance affects our brain. How these languages to express love create a deep connection between lovers.

The authors have tried to remain as objective as possible. But, again pardon my oversimplification, here is what one can understand from this experiment:

Having emotional discussions with your partner is as effective as kissing your partner. No wonder people resort to poetry, music, and literature to express their love. The more you are able to express your love for your partner the more positively it is going to influence your brain thereby you. You also feel better for yourself if you can express your love to your partner. It is like the act loving your partner is providing strength to yourself. Maybe this is how lovers become strong mentally. (No wonder couples madly in love are ready to fight the whole world!) Kissing your romantic partner has calming effect on you mental state. (I think almost no one needs explanation on that! But don’t forget that speech is equally potent)

And finally, men need more hugs compared to women! Although hugging is a common act in society, men are highly emotional when it comes to hugging. So, this is an advice not only for women but also for men and especially for men that you hug your bro, your buddy whenever you feel like expressing your love for them.

Our brain being one of the least understood wonders of the universe has always tricked us in spite of being the most vital part of our existence. The insights from such experiments in neuroscience with this closeness to reality bring more clarity in the ways we handle our relationships. We definitely owe thanks to the authors/ researchers involved in such studies for their valuable insights.

Reference article –

Investigating real-life emotions in romantic couples: a mobile EEG study – Packheiser, J., Berretz, G., Rook, N. et al.

Time in a Bottle – Making The Finite Life Last Forever

The moment we realize that we are in a possession of something truly valuable is the moment when we start fearing for its loss, even the idea of losing it haunts us. The urgency created by the finiteness of our lives is the reason why we could and should truly appreciate the people and things around us, it is the same urgency which pushes us to dare to live the life we want. Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle exposes this vulnerability as well as the strength of human beings in his song “Time in a Bottle”.

Remembering one the soulful artists – Jim Croce

Sometimes what poets, writers wish for is weird, quirky. Through this weirdness they are trying to overcome the realistic limitations we have as the human beings. Poets, songwriters are very well known to express their flights of imagination through their writings. They can make a man walk barefoot on the surface of the sun or make an elephant fly in the air making it light as feather or make a wild beast fall in love or make donkey sing like a tenor and list goes on. What makes these imaginations or these wishes special is that the imperfection these wishes’ originator wants to remove from the reality. When the poet makes a person walk barefoot on the sun, he/she wants that person to be able to tolerate and experience that hotness of the sun, when the poet makes the elephants fly, he/she wants them to have the bird’s perspective towards the world and there can be many interpretations depending on the core idea to be conveyed.

Wishes are one integral part of every person’s existence. Facts represent what the reality actually is and the wishes represent how we expect the reality to be. That is why every fact can be a wish but every wish cannot be a reality – a fact. That is where ideas like wishful thinking, false hope originate from. Even though wishes might not be the exact representation of reality – sometimes really far or exactly opposite it, they represent a hidden dimension of how we think and manage our expectations in day-to-day life. In simple words, we always wish everything to happen according to our ways but at the same time, we are also aware that “That’s not how things work in reality!”. And funny enough or given that our stubbornness to have control over the course of our lives, we still keep on wishing things to happen in certain way – our way. Wishes represent the bridge between how we understand the world and how the world really is (and trust me very few or almost none of us have real understanding of how the world is!) You wish a thing to be like this and exactly that happens, now that reality originated from your wish is your understanding of how the world is. When this wish does not come to fruition, the exact opposite of that wish is how the world is for you.

In simple words, a wish is the most powerful tool of how we want our world to be; practical or impractical, it still exists for us through our wishes. Even when it does not come to fruition, it the only existent and personal thing that brings us calmness, peace in the world full of uncertainties. Having too many unrealistic wishes makes one delusional and having too much realism makes one emotionless, mechanical; so there exists a spectrum of how we manage our expectations.

Now that we have established what wishes mean and what should be their dosage in our daily life. Let us move on to a special wish a man had for his loved ones – especially for his baby and his wife. This guy was Jim Croce, an American folk and rock singer-songwriter. The date 20 September 2023 marks 50 years since we lost one of the most original and soulful artists and human beings. Jim’s “Time in a Bottle” song is the embodiment of the tragedy of his life which also point towards the tragedy of being a human; furthermore, it also shows an optimistic and truly important perspective towards living a limited, fragile but fulfilled life. Jim’s words – Jim’s wishes in this song are simple, just in exactly enough quantity but the ideas and thoughts expressed transcend the borders of the infinity.

If I could save time in a bottle 

The first thing that I'd like to do

Is to save every day 'til eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you

Jim wants to have total control over the time he can have. The moment he will have hold over time of his life he wishes all that time to be with his loved ones. Using as simple object as a bottle to contain such an intangible, uncapturable and extremely powerful object like the time shows how desperately he wishes to have control over the time just to have the company of his loved ones – his wife and his son.

It is only the daring of the songwriter’s imagination to make the concept of time as the ‘one with ends of start and finish’ thereby making it finite and “contain”-able in a bottle even after knowing that it is impossible.

The wish to save every day, to have hold over the time to spend shows how time is the most valuable currency we have as the mortal beings. Jim’s wish to transcend even the eternity furthermore intensifies his wish ‘to spend the life with loved ones’.

They say time is an illusion, but we know how treating time as an illusion or as an expendable item can make our mortal lives suffer even more. Even though we have a grasp on the theory of time travel, we have barely scratched on the surface of how to perceive time and control it. This inseparable and highly influential impact of time on our lives make them fragile and irreplaceable too. Jim knew this; that is exactly why when he says that he wants to contain time and eternity to spend them with his loved ones. He is realistically implying that he does not want to waste even a single moment of his life. It’s a good advice for every one of us too.

If I could make days last forever

If words could make wishes come true

I'd save every day like a treasure, and then

Again, I would spend them with you

When Jim will get complete hold on eternity, he would still use that time fully with his family. The repetition of the idea expresses the urgency to not even waste the immediate next moment.

There is innate purpose in Jim’s wish to get hold on the things like eternity and time; things which do not have any boundaries or limits, things which cannot be contained into finiteness. The intent is to signify the incomparable value of the finite time we have in everyone’s life. Spending these moments in doing things we love, have passion for, and with our loved ones is the highest value one can extract from such an incomparable asset. This also a simple way to express how intensely and passionately Jim loves and cares for his family.

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do once you find them

The wishes and imagination expressed by Jim show how immediately he wants to live his life lying ahead. The moment he introduces the word “but” here brings all of us from his imaginary world into the harsh reality of life that we live in. He expresses a common yet unexpressed feeling all of us carry inside every one of us.

We are always trying to find the perfect timing, perfect moment until we realize that the time we have here, is finite. There is no option but to make every moment count. If you look at the words of people who have realized that the time they have on this earth is really limited, you will understand how the value of time for them shoots up exponentially.

The moment we realize that we are in a possession of something truly valuable – the moment when we appreciate what an important thing we own, is the moment when we start fearing for its loss, even the idea of losing it haunts us. The moment we find the true happiness is the exact moment when we start doubting that this happiness will instantly perish and something bad will start happening. This is human nature, there is nothing wrong in it. It also highlights how loss of certain thing actually makes us appreciate the true value of that lost thing.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Steve jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005

A true artist is an expert of bringing out such very common yet unexpressed emotions out to the masses through his /her creations. It creates this common ground where people from different walks of life – different levels of life share their common personal, intimate experiences. Jim beautifully puts down the tragedy of the finiteness of life and the urgency to live it, experience it thoroughly, inside -out. It is really heartbreaking to know that you won’t be there around your loved ones forever. And most importantly, the feeling of loss is more intense, dreadful than actual loss itself but that is what the reality is.

I've looked around enough to know

That you're the one I want to go through time with

Now what Jim says here is about how you can express your intense love, passion with practicality. He assures his loved ones that even though the time he has, the time all of us have is finite, we can still make it worth of our life by being with the people we love, by valuing them. This finiteness of our existence pushes us to appreciate everything, every person we have close to us.

You can see in the early part of the song, Jim expresses naïve, highly romanticized and somewhat foolish thoughts of being eternal forever to express the passionate love, affection towards his love. This early part of the song also indirectly reveals how carelessly we handle some important aspects and important people in our life, in our youth where we literally feel like immortals with infinite energy.

There comes a moment when we have to actually make decisions solely by ourselves which would alter the upcoming course of our very own life and there is no escape from these choices, at that same moment we understand what we hold dear to us, what actually matters, what is noise and what illusions we were following till that moment. Some would say that we become mature and more realistic. The perfect veil of illusions drops down showing the imperfect, crude reality. This is the moment we understand that even though the illusion was pleasing, the reality is where we actually exist and what could be more worthwhile than being with those who are special to us in this good and real time even though it is finite.

If I had a box just for wishes

And dreams that had never come true

The box would be empty

Except for the memory of how they were answered by you

The realization of the value of people, things, and moments in which we interacted with them makes us appreciate their real beauty. The time we must live may not be infinite but even in this limited time the memories we create with our loved ones make us truly immortal. These memories are the linkages which get carried on from one person to another sometimes from one generation to the next one.

When a person is granted with immortality but if he/she has no one to love, to care for or nobody cares for or loves him/her, then what realistic purpose does this eternal life serve? It is exactly equivalent to death.

Our existence is valid and real only when other people recognize it. It is a tough pill to swallow. Many would argue that the life comes from within, you are a whole universe existing inside you, you don’t need others to validate your life – your existence but please understand that these statements are valid only for the people whose value of life lies with the opinions of others. When I am expressing about the validity of our own life upon the recognition of others, it is the value creation and upliftment of the humanity inside of us due to the interactions we get involved into. You are a universe into yourselves but if you are not making other people’s lives better, affecting the objects, people in a constructive way you are an isolated universe which is exactly equivalent to living in your own imaginary world. It will still exist as a sole but that is one selfish way to live. Many undiscovered wonders are revealed when things interact with each other.

It might seem overly philosophical but when faced with the “existential crisis”, “existential angst”, “chaos of the reality and its imperfections” everyone needs an identity, a pivot to stick to make this life worthwhile. This feeling of making our life worthwhile is created only because of the urgency to live. And this urgency to live to its fullest is created due to the finiteness of the life.

Jim expressed this philosophy in his very simple yet powerful song. He appreciates that every purpose of his life found a direction towards completion, every wish he had was fulfilled at the exact moment when he decided to create memories with his loved ones. You must appreciate that most of the times our wishes create an illusive, deceptive reality in our head where everything is perfect, it is only upon exposure of these wishes to reality when the facts are revealed. These facts may not be perfect but they are the only real thing. That why memories are really very important.

Memories have similar nature to the imagination and wishes we have but they are the outcomes of we passing through the time. So, our memories are the next best things we have to the reality in which we live and not our imagination or wishes. Memories are the embodiment of the realistic imagination and wished realized. That is why we can make these memories eternal by creating them with our loved ones and engaging in the doing thing we love.

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do once you find them

I've looked around enough to know

That you're the one I want to go through time with

The needs and wants are less important than the moments we have with our loved ones. It is this irreplaceability of any other materialistic thing with the memories and moments in the company of the loved ones which Jim wants to highlight through his song.

There is one important story attached with the song “Time in a bottle”. Jim wrote this song when he came to know that he was going to be a father. He was a struggling artist enjoying the artwork he created with the support of his wife. You can say that he was in the bliss of his artistic creations which he loved creating. When he understood the start of his fatherhood, he came to truly know and appreciate the reality of life and the finiteness it has. This made him serious about his art which inspired him to create his world-famous album “You don’t mess around with Jim”. Next time when you will listen to this song with the knowledge of what actually inspired him to write this song, then you will appreciate how deeply he loved his son and his wife. He wanted every moment from thereon to be filled with their memories and that was enough to justify his finite life, finite yet truly invaluable. One can call it poetic, sad, tragic or poignant- Jim died in a plane crash aged 30. It feels like Jim had some foresight about his upcoming life when he wrote “Time in a bottle”. Even with the lifespan of mere 30 years, you will appreciate his life through this song “Time in a Bottle”. His life, thus becomes an example of creating a long-lasting life – finite yet long lasting, eternal and irreplaceable life.

The urgency created by the finiteness of our lives is the reason why we could and should truly appreciate the people and things around us.

Who knows, in coming eon or maybe in coming millennium we might actually be able to contain time in a bottle, then Jim’s all wishes might become a reality. Until then let us appreciate what we have as this incomparable precious life.