love

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.

- Rumi

love is linked to life. the longer we live, the more deeply we understand love. the love that a teenager insists that she feels is a legitimate love. it is different from that experienced by a twenty-five year-old or a sixty-five year-old, but it is love nonetheless. how do we know when we are in love? we feel it. we know with certainty when we are not in love, but we are unsure of everything when we are in love. the love between two people is an intimation of universal love, love in the abstract - the love one experiences when one effaces one's ego, one's self. when one gives love unselfishly to everyone, then one is divine. when one is united with love, one realises that loving truly is to recognise the universe within oneself, to recognise that the lover and the beloved are one.