Love

The pleasure of love is in loving; we are happier in the passion we feel than in the passion we inspire
François de la Rochefoucauld

It is hard for most of us to seperate the joy of loving someone else with the joy of them loving us. It is only when we love someone who doesn't love us back that we can seperate the two. But most of the time when someone we love doesn't love us back, it will make us perhaps sad or perhaps angry but it certainly doesn't make us feel happy. But in those situations we don't really love the other person as much as we love the anticipation and hope of getting something back.

I had the rare opportunity several years ago to experience what it is like to love someone else that I don't know and will never know much less have an intimate relationship with. I learned that it is far more satisfying to be in that kind of "hopeless" situation than it would be if I thought an intimate relationship may have been possible. I discovered that I didn't have to worry about whether I was giving him enough, whether he was giving me enough, or will he still love me in the morning. There was none of the fear and anxiety that normally accompanys relationships in the beginning. There was only my love for him. And it felt great.

When we love someone like that, we are effectively getting our ego out of the way. It is not about me and how much I am going to get, it is about them and how beautiful they are. And that's the way it should be. The passion we inspire may disappear at any time but the passion we feel will stay as long as we want it to. And that is what makes us happy. We are putting our focus where it should be, which is on appreciating our world, and the people in it, just the way it is and just the way they are.