To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket –safe, dark, motionless, airless– it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. – C.S. LEWIS
LOVE IS DIFFICULT
They say that love is difficult. They say that it will consume you, all of you, and that you will never be the same again.
You will be exposed to heartaches. You will experience pain, pain unlike the ones you’ve experienced before.
They say that once you love, there can be no turning back. Once your eyes are opened, you can never close them again. You’d have departed your childish innocence, that fairy tale world where nothing ever goes wrong and nothing ever comes unexpected.
Love is difficult. Why desire it?
None can judge which is far better than the heart that needs to answer such things for herself.
They say that love is difficult. But it is not easiness that I seek. Life is a struggle in itself. Look where there is no struggle, and all you can see is a world bereft of life and of consciousness.
You can never truly lose anything unless you have possessed something first. You can never grieve of loss less you have possessed something great, something that gave value to your life.
Difficult as it is, love is wonderful, and it is worth all the troubles other people may try to warn you about. Living a full life, risking to lose something wonderful. To love is indeed the one purpose a person desires to live his life for. Life always chooses to be born, to be experienced, and to be aware of the beautiful path we walk upon each day.
“But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.”
-Kahlil Gibran
LOVE IS ALWAYS WITHIN OUR REACH
Love is always within our reach. There isn’t a point in time when we can’t find love. There isn’t a place where we can’t be found by love. When God made our souls, He made sure we could always commune with love.
We may be parted with another person, but neither death nor distance could part us away from the love we have for our beloved.
We may be years away from making our dreams come true, but our love for that dream is already present in our hearts.
We may be in grief, yet even grief could never send away comforting hugs and warm hands that care.
We may be in poverty, yet no poverty could block away God’s abundant love being showered upon us night and day.
Love is always with us, within us and around us, guiding us, waiting for us, always ready to abide with us and to fill in us the deepest cries of our hearts.
WHY DO WE NEED SOMEONE TO LOVE?
Why do we need someone to love?
Because it gives us a purpose, a purpose other than our own selves.
Because it gives meaning to everything we do. We need that person for whom we could offer our work, our time, our beauty, our best ideals, our noblest thoughts, our purest intentions.
Because we need someone else to see that we still exist. Without someone else, what could all the Universe mean but empty space?
Because it keeps us from being stuck within ourselves and helps the life we have to flow outwards unto another. Without that other person, we are not prompted to grow, we are not allowed to get out of our own prisons but remain just as we have always been, almost motionless, almost without need to be freed.
Because we want to feel that we matter, and that it makes sense to know that we are still alive, and that it has made a difference that we have ever lived. When we return to dust from which we have come, what proof shall there be that we really have a soul if we have not loved at all?
When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved,
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies. – Dark Night
Related Article: WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME EVEN IF I’M NOT PERFECT?
“If you will love me I cannot promise you that I will not hurt you. I cannot promise you that I will not make you cry and that I’ll never break your heart. But if you will love me, I will bare my whole self naked before you, and I will reveal to you my soul. If you will love me, you can be certain that it is I that you will love, not a mask that fools you and gives you only what your eyes desire to see. If you will love me, you can be certain that you will love the depths of me, all of me that is in me, and I in turn will love you with all of me, with all my soul, with all my mind, with all my spirit, with all my flaws and beauty, and with all my very heart.” READ MORE…
The thing about hope is that it’s a positive force that shines the most when it’s dark. When everything’s going well, we hardly notice it’s there. But when things go against us, when our dreams fade and when we see no immediate reprieve from our troubles, that’s when hope does its best work for us.
"Where Hope Can Be Found"
One reply on “What is Love Really?”
Love is as essential to our souls as the air we breathe is to our bodies. Without it, as Paul said, “we are nothing.”
Perfect post for Valentine’s Day, Joyce!