My Date

Tonight I had the most wonderful date. Tonight as I sat alone in my room and I read my new book, and suddenly the inability to get through other books made sense. (those books didn't get me) It's with books that I seek this connectedness I can't get through other people, things, or encounters. I often form some of my most intimate relationships with my books. I can feel more understood by a book, then if I were in a room surrounded by 30.


The topic up for discussion was life, love, lessons, and spirituality. I like when people look back on those and reflect. Perhaps because I value myself as a reflective liver. There were quotes and thoughts in there that just made sense...

• "It was in love's absence that let me know how much love mattered."

If you know me then you know that when I was a child it became very clear to me that life was not really living if we did not know love. Honestly, there are times I wish that Icould have come to testify that I came to this awarness because of the love I felt in my life. But really it was because of the lack of love that I found out how important love is. It's in our pain that we can come to greater awakenings. Relating it back to Christianity we can see that suffering comes to an end, but love is forever. And in that search for a true definition of love we may endure suffering and even alienation.

• "The word 'love' is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theoriests of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb."

Love is clearly beyond just feelings, it's actions. Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely, an intention and an action. Will also implies that love is a choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. This directly relates back to the ideas of Christianity and how Jesus spread his gospel in how we should go about living.

• Love is a mix and it's a risk - We must see that it's a variety of ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust as well as honesty and open communication. It's both a give and take. "Many of choose relationships of just affection and care that will never become loving because they feel safer. The demands are not as intense as loving requires. The risk is not as great."

• You're going to connect with people differently throughout life. Some will stay and some will go. All will teach. And the best of all will help you to feel that you are on your way to knowing love. The difference is that some will touch your hearts and others will go deeper.

The deeper will open you up to a further part - you will see and know them and yourself for who you could be, and for who they and you could become in a together. This type of connection will be a difficult process, and that's the other part of love that people don't get or don't want to get.

• "Like so much else, people have also misunderstood the place of love in life, they have made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure was more blissful then anything and work; but there is nothing happier than good work and love, and extreme happiness requires work...that's what makes it so rewarding."

It's an ongoing committment to constructive struggle and change.

So where does this leave me? Of course it's a lot to think about and take in. And it challenges the world's ideas. In order to become more fully ourselves, and better we have to open up. We have to be willing to sacrifice our old selves in order to be changed by real love. I like exploring these thoughts, especially as I move further away from things that once were and form on my own what I want to be.