Dating : The Courage to Love

It takes courage to love —

Knowing that one day all those most dear to you, will be stripped away.

Or possibly it will be you who is first removed from them.

The older I get, the more months become inhabited by death, loss, pain, and grief.

It has caused me to stop, pause, and ponder, “Is it worth it?”

To love so profoundly is also to feel pain so profoundly.

Yet imagine not loving…

That would be the greatest tragedy of all, would it not?

For love cannot be frozen or withheld.

It is not ours to give, only to live.

A wave travels by sea, crests, and crashes to the shore.

That one physical expression is no more, but the water remains…

Just as it was, is, and will continue to be. Deep, expansive, wide, and unified.

There are ripples in the sea, sets that follow one after the other.

Ceaseless, the ocean flows.

Kabir, a 14th-century Indian mystic poet, and saint writes

“All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.”

So becomes the living tribute,

To accept and make peace with the death of our loved ones, and one’s eventual and imminent crossing too.

To make the most of the time still here — being the fullest, most glorious, and beautiful expression of the shapes we’ve been gifted as we travel to shore.

And like water, the spirit of love never dies.

It lives on eternally as a drop in the ocean, and the ocean in a drop.

Never separate, always whole.