On Love

"Love is a temporary madness;

it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides.

And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.

Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and

not two."

Thank you, Louis de Bernieres

Happy Love Day!

Let me not to the marriage of true minds,

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! It is an ever fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

With a deeper instinct...

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."

-Anais Nin-

The Path of Least Resistance

Been thinking a lot about love lately.


We spend our whole lives searching, talking about, thinking about and crying about love. We stay up late, can't sleep, bask in sunlight, talk to ourselves. We want it but we don't need it, we need it but we don't want it. I think from a young age we are taught that it is something to procure, like going to the market for a loaf of bread. So we search and search almost always in vain, and when we do feel that spark of love's beauty it is so fleeting that we act like idiots, doing anything to hold on to it.

In the last few years I have come to view love differently, not as something to search for but almost as a container within which I live. It is soft and pliable, it molds to me and I to it. It is always there, no matter who comes and goes. It is there in my weakest moment just as much as in my strongest. And how I choose to live my life invariably adds or takes away from the strength of the vessel. Just like the heart acts as a chamber for our blood, love acts as chamber for our bodies. And in fact, maybe the reason that we are constantly seeking companionship is in a subconscious effort to add to the love that already surrounds us. I'd like to think that when I am in a relationship that I am existing "in love" with that other person. Meaning that we are both inside of love, adding to it with the compassion, forgiveness and sense of understanding that we show one another.

Was on the flight to London today via Air India. It was fantastic. Good food, real silverware and plenty of space to move around. But the best part about it was something so subtle that you could've missed it if you blinked. The service. The staff weren't overly accommodating or super kind....there was just a familiar way of being. During the dinner service the steward came over and chided us for not eating, saying 'you won't get another meal until breakfast, you'll get hungry'. Later he warned us not to hit our funny bone on the raised arm rest "or you'll be in a lot of pain'. I loved the way he felt like an uncle of mine, concerned for my safety.

On the way out I saw him assisting an elderly lady much like he would've done his own mother. With one arm around her firmly, he cleared the way, occasionally touching her gently on the face to ensure her well-being. It warmed my heart.
Just by being an honest and kind human being, this man managed to create a whole plane-load
of love.