Love at First Sight - Believing in the magical things

It's OK to be realistic, practical, down-to-earth. I'd like to think that is what I am most of the time. But there are things I like to believe. Take love at first sight, for example. It's the theme of so many romance novels and most of us have fallen in love with someone the first time we've seen them. Scientists and researchers would have us believe that it is not love at all but an innate desire for survival. We estimate that this person would make a good mate, would provide for us and together we would produce strong healthy children. Apparently this all goes back to caveman times and the survival gene we are all supposed to possess...
There goes your romantic dreams! But only if you believe the scientists.

Vincent van Gogh is one of my favourite painters and I love his "starry nights". I have a copy of his painting of The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum at Arles hanging in my living room and love to look at it. It is so atmospheric, bringing memories of long summer evenings. Again, I recently read somewhere that the reason he painted those glorious starry skies was because he was taking some kind of medication at the time which produced a halo around lamps or stars when he viewed them.
Do I really want to believe that? No, I do not. I like to think that he looked up at the night sky and felt that awe we all feel on a cloudless night when the stars are twinkling and oh so far away and you wonder what it would be like to be up there....

Last weekend the dawn chorus was transmitted by multiple radio stations around the world until 6 a.m.GMT. I must admit that I did not sit up all night to hear it but did listen in to snatches during the night. It must have been a pretty awesome experience to anyone who did listen the whole time.
Next day I read a report which said that the male birds sing at dawn to declare their territorial rights and attract females. There was I, thinking birds sang to welcome the sunrise after a long night perched in a tree. Naive, perhaps? But I prefer my version. The dawn chorus, birdsong in the spring, are all delights of Nature and we should listen and be glad and not pay too much attention to all that scientific stuff. Life is for living and enjoying, after all.