EXPRESSIONS ON LOVE...

Love Is

True love is a matter of the heart.

It is sparked by that which is innate and for that reason you cannot choose who you fall in love with, at least not with true love. You can meet someone and the spark is lit immediately and you fall in love. You can get to know someone in a way that you may not have otherwise and in the course of doing so they spark something inside of you that ignites and you fall in love eventually. You can meet someone and something special occurs inside although you may not initially be sure what it is, but then as time and emotions move forward you come to realize that it is love and it was love and it will be love.

True love cannot be intellectualized. When you're in love you know it - you don't think it, you don't wish it, you know it because you feel it in your heart. If you think you're in love, you may not be. True love is a matter of the heart not a state of mind, although once in love it encompasses your mind, but love is driven by the heart. You can't make yourself be in love with someone with whom you're not. You can't stop yourself from being in love with someone with whom you are. You don't choose love, love chooses you and if you are lucky loves choice also chooses you for them. If you are blessed, loves choice is your soul-mate and everything else is accommodated and natural and perfect in loves sense of perfection.

You can try and suppress love externally, but that doesn't stop it from existing inside of you. You can try and disguise love but you can't hide it from yourself. Expressions of love may sometimes be complicated, but feelings of true love are never bad or wrong. Expressions of love may sometimes not be accommodated due to circumstances that don't allow it's fruition, but that doesn't eradicate it and one copes by retaining it in the private place in which it came to be and exists and is sustained: in the heart. You can't tell yourself that you don't love someone or can't love someone when your heart does love them. You can keep it to yourself or you can share it, but it can only cease to be in the place that it came to be: in your heart.

You can only fall out of love if the flame that ignited love in your heart is extinguished in your heart. You don't fall out of love because you're angry, or disappointed, or even hurt - love can sustain all of these. But if love is not nourished then the flame cannot be sustained. Since love is sparked in the heart by a connection from another, it takes that connection to sustain the spark. It is difficult if not impossible for the heart to sustain love without being nourished. Since you can't make yourself fall in love, you can't make yourself stay in love if the heart isn't being nourished, no matter how committed and dedicated and devoted you are to love and the object of your love. Once love finds you and is nourished and sustained it is improbable for your heart to be penetrated by another. But if that love isn't nourished it allows the heart to be open and for the possibility that it will find love elsewhere because the heart needs and beckons for love. The heart needs love to sustain itself.

When love is inequitable, it is only once the flame is extinguished that you realize it and feel foolish. As long as the flame is lit however, you will go through most anything, do most anything, put up with most anything to sustain it because the heart demands that you do so. It is only after the love is gone that everything changes just as it did when love was sparked. It is difficult but not impossible to get love back once the spark has been extinguished once. It is virtually impossible to get love back and / or to sustain it once the spark has been extinguished multiple times, because at some point the heart has had enough of the disappointment and lack of nourishment and therefore has nothing else to give and is no longer open. Promises and even acts that are sincere are no longer penetrable because the heart is no longer receptive to it. There is no greater singular lesson in love than that which is learned from giving a love that you don't receive in return.

It is therefore important to understand that true love is a blessing, and when you're lucky enough to have true love, you must be smart enough to nourish it and not take it for granted. True love cuts through and diminishes if not eradicates much of what makes relationships naturally difficult. All relationships require attention and compromise and focus and understanding and compassion and fairness and passion and friendship and selflessness and communication - true love makes all of those things easiest to give because of the naturalness of the emotions that are shared. When two share true love each ones needs are fulfilled because the needs of one is the priority of the other and vice versa, resulting in an equity that is comforting and special and beautiful and accommodating and sustaining. There is no greater shared lesson in love than loving like you want to be loved. There is no greater pleasure in love than in receiving the special love that you give.

The world is often cold and people are often selfish. Relationships are difficult. Finding and sustaining love is often difficult, finding true love is often improbable.  Finding your soul-mate is often impossible but everyone's soul-mate is out there, somewhere. When you find your soul-mate it is truly a blessing from God and thanks must be given by recognizing and appreciating that blessing by loving your soul-mate just as you want them to love you, and doing so as a matter of and with all your heart because that's where love comes from, that's where love is nourished and sustained, that's what love is.

 ©A.D.