free flow thoughts on true love...

I experienced true love this holiday. It was kind, giving and tender. It was not jealous, it did not desire to change or be changed. It laughed and enjoyed each moment to the fullest. It did not need or want for anything, although it freely gave and received. It was not wary nor did it weary. It did not try to be more or less than it was. It did not demand anything in return for its presence. It simply "was", and in simply being, it did not plan a future full of hopes and dreams, goals and families, cars and houses.

It remained itself, content and joyful in the moment, basking in the sunlight of its purity, filling those it touched with the warm glow of life. It did not bind them, but filled their hearts and souls like the most beautiful sunset ever glimpsed.



True Love
Most of us have thought a lot about this. We dream of finding the meaning behind these words from a time when we are too young to even consider the opposite sex as "cootie" free. As children our heads were filled with Disney, true love and fairy tale endings until we imagined that it was an absolute. We fully expected to reach the words "and they lived happily ever after."

Perhaps that's why first love is so intense, and then the biggest heartbreak.

"You know, the worst thing about breaking up isn't giving up or begin without the person, it's giving up all of the dreams you'd built in your head of the future."
- an ex-boyfriend upon our break-up

So why does love hurt so much? Perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps love is a pure and beautiful crystal clear lake which we like to swim in...then if we stay awhile, we pee in it, then we toss in our garbage, then leeches...then one day we say, "What happened to it? It used to be so nice."

Most of us aren't comfortable unless we are at least a little unhappy, yet ultimately we think that love should be easy, beautiful and magical. We try to make love fit our ideas of how it should be and assume it's gone bad and should be thrown out when it no longer fits. Of course we also think that it should grow...

Marriage, passion, romance (or perhaps that should be romance, passion, marriage) begin with Eros, or erotic love. It's largely physical and in many ways quite shallow, although exciting and fulfilling for a time. After a few years of marriage, the passion dies down and is replaced by philo, "brotherly" love. Is this love any less valid or beautiful? Yet so many prefer to throw it out, thinking that love has gone bad simply because it's changed. It's grown.

The third kind of love is agape, or unconditional. It's often referred to as the love of God. Can we, as humans, feel agape? Agape is the love that consumes. It takes over our hearts, souls and bodies filling our senses with love.

Have you ever felt (for one reason or another) full of love for the world and everyone in it? This is agape. It's most often expressed today in the form of enthusiasm: when someone is so passionate about something that it consumes their emotions body and soul- that's agape.

Perhaps as humans we're only capable of feeling it in bursts. Can you imagine someone full of love and enthusiasm for everything all the time?! They'd shortly find themselves forcefully stuck in a mental hospital. (That's a sobering thought.)

Addendum
Reading back, I realized that it was an interesting choice of words that later revealed their meaning to my conscious mind.

"I experienced true love..."
not
"I fell in love..."

I can't say that I fell in love. I didn't. Neither did he. Rather, our hearts and souls dipped into the soul of the world, and there we were filled with love. How did he experience it? Was it in the same way that I did? I don't know. Each person is different and perceives the same event differently. What do I know? I know that the experiences we shared, innocent as they were, filled me with agape. It was three days before it finally faded from my being, but it left me in a much better place than it found me. How could it not? Even now, the world is a little more beautiful and the crystal lagoons of the Maldives sparkle a little brighter because of it.

I also know that in the Soul of the World I loved him, and because the Soul of the World exists concurrently in all times, I love him and will always love him. In the physical world? Well, I am truly thankful for those twenty hours of communion and hope that we meet again. Further, I hope that we maintain and nourish a friendship because of what we've shared. (Notice the choice of words, "I hope..." not, "I expect..." or "I need..." or even "I want..." but hope, simply a good wish for the future, not something one hangs the future of one's happiness on.)

As I look at this true love, I become more aware of others. My best friend is also a true love. Just because we don't want to mate doesn't make it any less true. I would give anything and everything I have without hesitation if it would help him in anyway, and he for me. When I think of him it always begins with warmth in the bottom of my heart that quickly moves a smile onto my face and a softness to my eyes and a gladness that reaches all the way down to my toes. The last few years haven't been good years for him, but that does not and will not change my love. If anything, it becomes stronger because in those times I can perhaps give more to him than I could in other times.

Finally, I think of all of the little moments of true love. I define true love as agape, or unconditional love that fills our hearts and beings. I remember watching a young girl dancing in the waves, a father and son fly a really cool kite on a perfect afternoon, an old woman with eyes that sparkle as she tells me of her wild youth. In all of these moments I was filled with love and happiness, yet I did not expect things of them. I didn't ask for commitments or favors.

True love asks nothing. It simply "is".