“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” Thomas Merton
I hope that you have, or have had at least once, felt that all-consuming, heart-warming feeling of true love that cannot be duplicated in any other way. It transcends all other joyful emotions; when you see your true love and your heart “soars like a hawk”, knowing that among all the human beings that walk the earth, that person is the one you love the most. And why is this such a prized possession? Because when you carry true love in your heart, you tend to let it bleed into other relationships and interactions. You find it harder to carry a grudge, more difficult to be unkind, or harder to stay angry at someone or about something.
When there is the absence of love, we tend to wander in a twilight of unrest and dissatisfaction, not quite grasping what is missing in our life, but knowing something isn’t quite right. Most certainly there are times when we lose sight of the love we have; exasperation, annoyance, mistrust or uncertainty with and towards our loved one, but these usually are temporary and pass out of our life almost as quickly as they appeared, hopefully.
I can only speak for myself when I say that in spite of all the ups and downs in my life, when despair and anger were at the forefront of my vision, there still remained a deep, solid and immovable love for my wife, and having moved through that time of imbalance, I find that I love her even more than ever before, with my heart warming to the sound of her voice or seeing her across the room. For me, this is my true destiny and I willingly embrace it. For you, I wish the same.
Happy Valentine’s Day. Dr. Ben