love

LOVE


Love is that fragile flower of most uncommon beauty. One which can never be found by purpose alone while wandering through life's gardens. But one whose color and fragrance is most pure and meaningful when discovered by accident while tending to the more mundane duties of the common man. A diamond found lying quietly amongst the broken glass of childhood's shattered windows.

To love another is the supreme sacrifice of self. For we must give freely and completely of ourselves to another, without reservation or condition. To give less serves only to hinder the growth of our evolution from self sustaining isolation to a greater joining of universal awareness. As children we love by instinct but it is a selfish love. One which results out of necessity, born of helpless reliance on others for survival. It is an innocent love, free of complicated psychosocial encumbrances or expectations. But it is a hungry love which takes much more than it gives in the beginning.


"...this idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny."

Quentin Crisp), British author.

"We love in another's soul whatever of ourselves we can deposit in it; the greater the deposit, the greater the love."

Irving Layton), Canadian poet.

Love defies generalizations. Poets, philosophers, theologians, and countless others have ascribed their own theories and interpretations but often they still fall short of the goal of capturing the true nature of this unfathomable entity. The strength of love lies in its diversity. It possesses the unique ability to evolve, change, and permutate over the course of our lives. Just as we grow outwardly we must also grow inwardly. Our thoughts, realizations, and perceptions are given credence by our individual experiences on the separate paths we follow in our quest for love. And as love is an integral part of our inner selves, so it must grow and mature as well. It possesses the ability to adapt to its internal as well as its external environment. It not only changes as we change but it also ebbs and flows outwardly dependent on the receptivity of those to whom it is directed.

During certain periods of our lives love may seem to fade or even disappear entirely from our emotional palette. But once conceived it never truly ceases to exist. Love is the ultimate survivor. It has a will to live as strong as the will of its human container. If necessary, it may hibernate, withdraw like a turtle into its shell. When it is rebuffed or rejected by the harshness and cold complacency which can be so common in others, it folds in on itself until which time it again feels safe to venture out into a more nurturing environment. But it does not die.

We say we fall in love but it is a misnomer. We do not fall anywhere. We simply open our hearts and allow the love inside to project its energy towards the heart of another. If it is well received and properly tended, it creates a spiritual bond between the two hearts. However, love is an individualized emotion. It is a part of who we are and just as no two people share the exact same emotional make-up, neither can they share totally identical expressions of their love for one another. The beauty of a strong and viable relationship is seen when two souls meet and the colors of their love complement each other.

We are in love when we can find that fragile state of being where our individual love demands no more than the other person can give and when we can provide the necessary energies to allow them to be fulfilled as well. Love cares nothing for equality but it insists on balance. That balance is possible only when both people are satisfied that their own expectations and needs in a relationship are being adequately provided for.
We are merely passengers on our ship of destiny and love is the compass that guides our journey through life. Whether it is love for another human being, a cherished goal, or a desire to find completeness and meaning to our lives bears little consequence on the necessity for following the course that love charts. Love cannot live comfortably in a vacuum. It must be allowed free reign and be given the opportunity to explore beyond the confining walls of self-protection which we construct as barriers to the ravages of life. It is the flagship of our soul and the purveyor of our most cherished dreams of a purposeful existence. Love we hide or hold back from others out of fear is love wasted. It is of no value to us when held inside but can increase in value a hundredfold when shared with another like minded individual or when directed towards a greater aspiration beyond our own selfish needs.
It has been often said, when attempting to offer explanation towards an otherwise unlikely pairing, that love is blind. In this context it is insinuated that love is lacking in one of the physical senses and is unable to discern the otherwise obvious imperfections which may be evident to those who proclaim to have a clearer view of reality. While this may bear some truth as to the tendency for love to ignore certain unseemly attributes which may be present in another, it does little to give credit to the truer vision of love itself. Love possesses no physical senses whatsoever. More so, it is an extension of the physical senses we are burdened with as human beings. Our distinct but individual views of reality are based on the input we receive from those physical senses. And those senses are often influenced by factors which lie beyond the reach of the senses themselves. A motion picture fools us into believing that we are seeing a seamless replay of events when in actuality we are seeing nothing more than a rapid series of frozen moments in time captured by the eye of the camera.

When we gaze at a beautiful red rose we see only the narrow spectrum of color which is reflected back at us but the entire spectrum of all the other colors are absorbed by and contained within that same rose. Invisible but still present. Ask a man, blind from birth, to describe a rainbow or a deaf person to sing along to a song on the radio. It is of course impossible for them to do so. However, ask those same people to speak to you of their perceptions of love and you may be amazed at how closely they coincide with your own. We, as human beings, can never fully comprehend the reality perceived by another individual. Therefore we must be careful in our judgments and in the conclusions we draw based on our own perceptions of reality.

Love's reality, like beauty, is held solely in the eyes of the beholder. And love's vision, if we must transpose a physical sense upon a non-physical entity, is crystal clear. It seeks that which coincides appropriately with its own desires. It is not foolproof, nor is it always accurate in striking close to the heart of its target. Nevertheless, it is an essential component of our soul's repertoire and must be given the autonomy it requires to seek out that which holds promise to provide the needed sustenance for its own growth.

"Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny..."

Emma Goldman), U.S. anarchist

And if perchance, like emotional radar, our love detects that long sought coherence in the countenance of another heart's desire, our will becomes nothing more than a candle in the wind of destiny's storm. Love, enraptured by the covenant of its own reality, bursts forth with renewed direction and purpose. Senses overwhelmed, our mortal lives become nothing more than a superficial shell of awareness as love has its way with our heart. To deny the event is folly. To question the source is pointless. To attempt to contain the emotion is senseless. It is we who are blind, love sees clearly and must follow its course to the end. For there can be no greater achievement in our lives than to allow the essence of our heart to find meaning and purpose in the heart of another.

"...And only in the end we'll see,
just what our lives were meant to be,
When all our childhood fantasies
Are lost within the mysteries
Of Time."
Alan W. Goodson, American realist
Love is affection. Love is sacrifice. Love is compromise. Love is faith. Love is believable and unbelievable. Love is destiny. Love is strength. Love is trust. Love is a desire with lust. Love is the world. Yeah, exactly what is love?
Love is all about showing ineffable feelings, affections, and solicitude toward a person whom you care about. It can also be expressed in many ways. Love has so many definitions and it is define differently to others in their own opinions.
Love has many different meanings to different people. For a four-year-old, love is marrying her daddy when she grows up. For an elementary school kid, love is what he or she feels for his or her best friend, who also serves as a boyfriend or girlfriend. To a fifteen-year-old boy, love is what he should feel for his girlfriend of the moment; only because she says she loves him. But as we get older and “wiser,” love becomes more and more confusing. Along with poets and philosophers, people have been trying to answer that age-old question for centuries: What is love? One definition of love in The Merriam-Webster dictionary is “attraction based on sexual desire” (439). Some people believe that love and sex are one in the same. If two people are in love, they should be having sex.
One of the greatest human fears is living, being, and dying alone; however, there is something that can overcome this fear, and that is love. What is love? Can you see it? Does one touch love, or is love only to be sensed? Does true love exist, or is it just a cheap thrill that lasts for one night? Does love have substance or is it merely a word fabricated as a way to justify the means of propagation?
What love is to us depends on how we define love, and how the ones we love define love. You can't chose who you "fall in love" with, it just happens. You realize one day, that a person means more to you than your own life. That is when you know that you are in love. Love exists in different forms in different people's minds. The word love, and its related words, has been created through out the time, but does true love really exist? "True love" is a state of mind, which comes and goes in people. The truth of love is nearly impossible to find, with the odds being about 0.0000000001% of ever finding it, and it's getting smaller everyday. It isn't tangible, it isn't emotion, but it can be a crutch for the weak.
The concept of "true love" is a shelter for those people who believe that without love, there would be no point to life, no hope, no God, no anything. That life could just exist, going forward contrary to these principals. It is obvious that love means many different things to different people and that to each it has a different value. Because of these different values, some people throw the word around meaninglessly because they know it is what someone wants to hear. They say that they love, but with no meaning or substance to back it up, it just becomes a cheap thrill. How is that love? How can people use such a beautiful metaphor to justify these actions, unless it was created as an excuse to commit these actions. That isn't love. They can use that as an excuse, because that isn't really love. They use the idea, the theories, and basis of love as an excuse because they are using it in a place of what they are really feeling. That loneliness and that bitterly dependent feeling fill their hearts, but that isn't really love. Unfortunately in our world, shallowness and this misuse of love are applauded by the troglodytic masses.
Can love truly exist when there are people who accept love at different values? People don't have to agree on the value and place of love for it to exist, but one object cannot exist in two places at once, without different values. By being perceived as different values it cannot own every plane and mind, meaning that some values are truer than others. Some people can search all of their lives for love never to find it, and yet others can live a lie thinking that they have found it. Love is not what it is because people desire it to be so, and love is not what it is because of our day-to-day human interactions. Love is what it is because of the different ways we imagine love exist. Love and emotions are constant, because they are ruled by instinct; however love and emotions are opposites. They play against each other, but cannot truly exist without each other. Because of this relationship, love can have both a light and a dark side. If love were the most powerful force in the universe, then it would have the power to kill the living.
When you give your heart to a person, thinking that they would never hurt you, only to have them betray you. You are left with an empty feeling, and in a way it does kill a part of you. The side of love with the power to kill makes the people who would use love as an excuse weak. These people use it as an anchor to protect themselves from emotions. Some people will even use it as an excuse to take their own life, trying to escape their pain. This makes love weak, and in turn makes the people who love weak.
This is the power of love, and yet still people take it too lightly. Love has a serious power, which is too often taken for granted. Love has horrid consequences if you do not respect love for what it is to others. It is not always what you think it is, or what you think it should be. Love can take many different forms and can even be deceptive. One thing about love is for sure; once you find it, you never want to lose it. Love is everywhere and in many different forms all around us. Love permeates our thoughts, fills our dreams, controls our actions, but it still has no definite value. Of course, love is different for everyone, and this is what love is to me. No one can tell you what love is to you, because you have to find it for yourself, and define it through your own experiences.
WE ARE FOREVER LOOKING FOR LOVE in our lives. We look for a sweetheart who will turn into a loving spouse. We look for love from our parents and respect from our children. We look for love from our government, hoping our leaders will be compassionate with us and our countrymen. But strangely, we often get into our worst messes when all we are doing is looking for love. A marriage may split up due to one of the partners looking elsewhere for love. A teenager may wreck his car and his body by driving too fast in a quest for a certain kind of love from his peers. Desperate for love, people ruin their minds with drugs which give them a temporary surge of a counterfeit feeling similar to love.

Does anyone ever find love? If so, where is it? Observation suggests that love, real as it is, cannot be found and isn't anywhere. When you go looking for it, you are going to find something else. What you find may keep you occupied for awhile, even addicted, but it's not love. Love is the most priceless treasure that life affords us. Religions enshrine it, billboards exploit it, professors categorize it, and newspapers report on its perversions. But it is nowhere to be found.
Love is a song that threads its way through our lives from beginning to end, but did you ever try to find a song? You just know when you're hearing a song, and you just know when you're experiencing deep love, but you can't find either one. The song is a process. It weaves its way through the vocal cords and through the air molecules, but neither the vibrations, nor the ears that hear them, nor the voice that produces them, is the song. You can write notes on paper to suggest a song, but the notes are not the song. A song is a process that cannot be the same twice. Even if you hear a recorded song twice in succession, there are two different songs because you yourself have changed slightly between hearings. A song is a participatory, unrepeatable process. And so is love.
Love and songs hide in the cracks of the universe--not only between the atoms, but between the betweens, in the realm of quality, not quantity--in the unmanifest (which is nowhere). Love and songs must and do express themselves using time and space, but they can be neither found nor captured in time and space.

If no one were looking for love, our world would be in sad shape, some might say. But our world already is in sad shape precisely because so many people are on this quest which seems so laudable and reasonable until you examine the results of it. The problem with looking for love is that it is the me that wants it. The me wants love in the form of pleasure, money, status, fame, and any number of other forms. And if the me wants these things badly enough, the me will get them. Unfortunately, all the me gets is the forms and not the love. The me grab for the beautiful flame and gets only hot ashes. Love eludes the me always, because the me is somewhere, and love is nowhere--they can never meet.
Is there no way, then, to find love? Is there no solution to this dilemma? Probably not. However, it is a simple fact that anyone can love. It is one of our inalienable rights as humans to love and to give. Perhaps life could not even exist without this process. There is an electricity generated in the action of love that is as real as that which powers a train or lights a reading lamp. As with electricity, no one really knows what love is nor where it comes from, but we do know we can channel both electricity and love through conduits. Properly channeled electricity can transform our environment, and properly channeled love can transform the quality of our lives.
It seems that love is most vibrant in us when we forget ourselves. Self-forgetfulness is recommended by most religions as a way to peace and enlightenment. Knowing this, spiritual aspirants try to forget themselves, hoping peace and enlightenment will come. Catch number one here is that they cannot forget that they are forgetting themselves, so they are still caught in the me. There is no catch number two.
When we grow weary of looking for love and finding only its ashes and its forms, we may suddenly give up the search. When we have been bitten by our greed and have had our very health impaired by our search for love, we stop our hurried quest one day and look within--not within the me, but within the cracks of the universe. We may not see anything, but we feel something--we hear a song. We feel a change in ourselves, a new perspective from nowhere. We haven't asked for it. We just stop searching and there it is. That is love, sneaking into our lives from the cracks between the betweens. We were never away from love, but we could never find it. We wore ourselves out like the man who ran around the streets of the village searching for some air to breathe. He wasted much air to do his searching, but he never found air.


Listen to the silence if you would hear the song of love. Love may catch you between bites of an apple or while you are cleaning the toilet. You live within love always, but you can never find it, capture it, preserve it, or explain it--you might as well try to build a rose with a hammer and nails. Just wait, and listen, and watch, and work--and one day when the time is right, a rose appears on the bush. This rose is rooted in the cracks of the universe, and so is love, and so are you.
True Instance Of Love
Love Awakwardly
I yearn to love and be loved. Yet I am whole without it. Because if you allow yourself to be governed by love to the extent that either you are depressed ':::; its absence or more seriously, you - the individual- are suppressed by its presence in your life, it only brings more unhappiness than the happiness :' w can ever offer.
"You can't own a human being and thus you can't lose what you don't own."
For instance, I don't think Nafisa Josephs (who hanged herself after her fiance called off their marriage) suicide was about love. It was a response that .=.Ludes to lack of emotional well being. Though I don't really claim to know what love means to todays youth, in my private dictionary it is an emotion that ~ felt rather than expressed, dreamt rather than lived.
Love is the power that changes oneself - makes and moulds oneself into a beautiful person. Not only because the people themselves change, but the ~~:ationship is the definition of ones self. Love is also imperfect. Perfect love does not exist. Take it or leave it.
But I live with perfect love - in my dreams .. .it is the song of my heart, my definition, my real self. It is like the white clouds lingering onto the clear 'blue sky. Love is the most beautiful emotion on earth, and really does not need anyone to love. One can justlove ... Just like me 

The song I begin to sing remains unsung to this day The time has passed over me, while playing
And not playing, stringing and unstringing
My instrument to the tune of love.
He came beside me, when the night was
Still dark, leading to eternal nothingness and I was alone.
My eyes woke not; I was deep into my sleep
Enjoying it - was I cursed? A question, which had no answer Oh! Its a terrible feeling, butterflies in my stomach,
I am immobile, shivering
From top to bottom.
A feeling trying to overpower me, drive me along, Whisk me off, making me fly on the wings
Of a white dove, enveloped in love.
He was there with open arms,
'Jaking my dreams play, stringing the Tunes oflove.
Alas! I am still lost - why?
Will I always fail to see him whose breath Touches my heart, refreshes my soul. ..
Dawn is yet to come - I could feel the wind Rushing by, touching me with loving care \\lliting for me to wake up - as a different being, A precious flower.
I have yet not seen his face, but know He is pleasing to the eye,
I have not heard his voice, but know It is deep and melodious,
I have not seen his eyes, know not .\nat colour they are - but know that It is deeper than any ocean.
I have only heard his footsteps, coming To\\'ardsme
.-\nd my pulse - beating with every step he takes ... =__ow is immortal, but life is not
: :iw till this day in the hope - to meet him But when?
The time has not come; the music is yet to Start
Only the wish to meet him remains in my Heart.
He will meet one day, surely
The meeting will be as hot and pious As the fire
As innocent as the little dove and the morning dew, As sweet as the nightingales song,
As vibrant as the suns rays glittering on the Mountain peaks ...
We will meet one day!
My eyes opened ... By the time I managed to distinguish between dream and reality, to shake off the remnants of the beautiful feeling, the sky outside was awash with gray light, the clouds hanging low. As the present gradually came back into focus, I stood dazed. It was such a different feeling, a whole new world of emotions developing inside me. My heart jumped for joy, I could feel the harsh wind, could feel the rain fall on me like an endless stream - each drop seemed like the very epitome of love and affection. I felt as if the heaven is pouring all its blessings on me. And I realised that I am in love, in love with my imagination, my dream - with the voice that is unheard, eyes that are unseen - this is love for me which defines me: innocent, pure, and perfect world of utopia.
I realised that this is a non'practical dream, but then, if dreams provide happiness and help to mould you into a better person, then what harm is there in dreaming? That too, if they are about love? I would love to live with my dreams - my eyes will open to the morning sun caressing me lovingly. TIll then let me remain immersed in my dreams, heart and soul.
"Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music. Do I wake or sleep? - John Keats
I'm in love, but awkwardly.