...more writings...

- The only test if you are really in love is if it is alright with you to let go even if you will not be the one to share his/her happiness and you are still maintaining the friendship. The will to extend ones’ self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s growth in all human dimensions – physically, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.

- Major surgery hurts but it saves your life

- Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but you have to remember that in friendship, the only heart you have to give is your own.

- You never lose by loving, you lose by holding back

- Truly loving another means letting go of all expectations. It means full acceptance, even celebration of another’s personhood.

- If you judge people, you have no time to love

- Life does not come with erasures

- Friendship is the best gift that you can give anyone.

- There are always two choices, two paths to take. One is easy, and its only reward is that it’s easy

- Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

- The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

- If you would be loved, love and be lovable.

- To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

- By giving, you teach others how to give.

Unconditional Love

By: John Powell

Unless you give your word and your promise of fidelity to another, there can be no real trust and consequently no authentic relationship or secure framework in which two people can grow.

A meaningful life can result only from the experience of love, and this implies a commitment and dedication to another. Love rejects the question “What am I getting out of this?” as the only criterion of fulfillment. Love understands by direct experience those often-quoted words of Francis of Assisi: “It is in giving that we receive”.

Love takes time, demands a history of giving and receiving, laughing and crying, living and dying

Clinging dependency and jealous possessiveness are counterfeits of true love.

“Do your own thing!” – I cannot do my thing without somehow affecting you.

For a person to be is to-be-with-thers.

When I question myself about the place love has in my life, I must therefore ask if there is any person in my life whose growth and happiness is a s real or more real to me than my own If so, love has truly entered my life.

Obviously the commitment to love will involve me in much careful and active listening. I truly want to be whatever you need me to be, I want to say whatever will promote your happiness, security and well-being. To discover your needs, I must be attentive, caring and open both to what you say and to what you cannot say. However, the final decision about the “loving thing” must be mine.

I may read you wrongly on occasion and misjudge your needs. I have done this so often to so many in the past. But know this that my decision is to love you and my commitment is to your true and lasting happiness. I am dedicated to your growth and fulfillment as a person. IF I SHOULD FAIL YOU, FOR LACK OF WISDOM OR BECAUSE OF THE ABUNDANCE OF WEAKNESS IN ME, PLEASE FORGIVE ME, TRY TO RECOGNIZE MY INTENTION, AND KNOW THAT I WILL TRY TO DO BETTER.

I am only offering an exchange, not a gift. And true love must always be a free gift.

Unconditional love corresponds to one of the deepest longings, not only of the child, but of every human being; on the other hand, to be loved because of one’s merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this, or that – there is always a fear that love could disappear. Furthermore, “deserved” love easily leaves a bitter feeling that one is not loved for oneself, that is loved only because one pleases, that one is, in the last analysis, not loved at all but used. (Erich, Fromm, The Art of Loving)

The message of unconditional love: You can be whoever you are, express all your thoughts and feelings with absolute confidence. You do not have to be fearful that love will be taken away. You will not be punished for your openness of honesty. There is no admission price to my love, no rental fees or installment payments to be made. There may be days when disagreements and disturbing emotions may come between us. There may be times when psychological or physical miles may lie between us. But I have given you the word of my commitment. I have set my life on a course. I will not go back on my word to you. So feel free to be yourself, to tell one of your negative and positive reactions, of your warm and cold feelings. I cannot always predict my reactions or guarantee my strength, but one thing I do know and I do want you to know: I will not reject you! I am committed to your growth and happiness. I will always love.

What do we fear in the promise of Unconditional Love”

There will be days when the well of warm feelings will run dry, when the decision of fidelity will be tested. There will be long and gray days when the rewards of loving will seem like distant memories of faint hopes.
I fear that I will have to give up my individual interests and personal tastes “ A love relationship should be like two islands that remain separate and distinct, but whose shores are washed by the shared waters of love.”

Now and Then

Movie: Now and Then
Demi Moore received a message from Crazy Pete
“There are things in life that you cannot control. That’s not a reason for you to shut the door to the world”

Beyond Pearls by Walter Tubbs

If I just do my thing and you do yours
We stand in danger of losing each others and ourselves
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations;
But I am in this world to confirm you
As a unique human being.
And to be confirmed by you.

We are fully ourselves only in relations to each other;
The “I” detached from a “Thou” disintegrates
I do not find you by Chance;
I find you by an active life of reaching out.

Rather than passively letting things happen to me,
I can act intentionally to make them happen

I must begin with myself, true;
But I must not end with myself;
The truth begins with two.

Author: Unknown

After a while you learn the subtle
Difference between holding a hand and cheering a soul,
And you will learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
and company doesn’t mean security
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts, presents, and promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your heads up and your eyes open
With the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child
And you learn to build your roads on today
because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much
So plan your own garden and decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers
And you learn that you really can endure
That you really are strong,
And you really do have worth

Gestalt Prayer by Fritz Perls

I do my thing, and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you and I am I;
If by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped

Sonnets From The Portuguese #XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love’s sake only.
Do not say “I love her for her smile,
her looks, her way of speaking gently”,
for a trick of thought that falls in well in mine,
and ores brought a sense of pleasant ease on such a day!
For these things in themselves, Beloved,
may be changed, or changed for thee,
and love, so wrought may be unwrought.
So, neither love me for thine own dear pity’s
wiping my cheeks dry, a creature might forget to weep,
who love thy comfort long, and lose they love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that ever more.
Thou mayst love on, or through love’s eternity.

A Decade by Amy Lowell

When you came, you were like red wine and honey
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness

Now You are like morning bread, smooth & pleasant
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savor
But I am completely nourished.

THE SACRAMENT OF WAITING

The English poet John Milton once wrote that those who stand and wait also serve. I think I would go further and say that those who wait render the highest form of service. Waiting requires more self-discipline, more self-control and emotional maturity, more sustaining love in our cause, more unwavering hope in the future, more sustaining love in our hearts than all the great deeds of deering-do that go by the name of action.

Waiting is a mystery – a natural sacrament of life – there is a meaning hidden in all the times we have to wait. It must be an important mystery because there is so much waiting in our lives.

Everyday is filled with those little moments of waiting – testing our patience and our nerves, schooling us in self-control – “pacencia lang”. We wait for meals to be served, for a letter to arrive, for a friend to call or show up for a date. We wait on line at cinemas and theaters, concerts and circuses. Our airline terminals, railway stations, and bus depots are great temples of waiting filled with men and women who wait in joy for the arrival of a loved one – or wait in sadness to say goodbye and give that last wave of the hand. We wait for birthdays and vacations – we wait for Christmas. We wait for spring to come – or autumn – for the rains to begin or stop.

And we wait for ourselves to grow from childhood to maturity. We wait for those inner voices that tell us when we are ready for the next step. We wait for graduation, for our first job, our first promotion. We wait for success and recognition. We wait to grow up – to reach the stage where we make our own decisions.

We cannot remove this waiting from our lives. It is part of the tapestry of living – the fabric in which the threads are woven that tell the story of our lives.

Yet current philosophies would have us forget the need to wait, “grab all the gusto you can get”. So reads one of America’s great Beer advertisements – Get it now. Instant pleasure – Instant transcendence. Don’t wait for anything. Life is short – Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you’ll die. And so they rationalize us into accepting unlicensed and irresponsible freedom – premarital and extramarital affairs – they warn against attachment and commitment – against expecting anything of anybody, or allowing them to expect anything of us – against vows and promises – against duty and responsibility – against dropping any anchors in the currents of our life that will cause us to hold and wait.

This may be the correct prescription for pleasure – but even that is fleeting and doubtful – what was it Shakespeare said about the mad pursuit of pleasure – “Past reason hunted, and once had, past reason hated.” Not if we wish to be real human beings, spirit as well as heart, we have to learn to wait. For if we never learn to wait, we’ll never learn to love someone other than ourselves.

For most of all waiting means waiting for someone else. It is a mystery, brushing by our face everyday like a stray wind or a leaf falling from a tree. Anyone who has ever loved knows how much waiting goes into it – how much waiting is important for love to grow – to flourish for a life-time.

Why is this? Why can’t we have right now what we so desperately want and need? Why must we wait – 2 years, 3 years, 5 years – and seeming waste so much time? You might as well ask why a tree should take so long to bear fruit – the seed to flower – carbon to change into diamond.

There is no simple answer – no more than there is to life’s other demands – having to say goodbye to someone you love because either you or they have already made other commitments; or because they have to grow and find the meaning of their own lives – having yourself to leave home and loved ones to fine your own path – Goodbyes, like waiting, are also sacraments of our lives.

All we have to know is that growth – the budding, the flowering of love needs patient waiting. We have to give each other time to grow. There is no way we can make someone else truly love us or we them, except through time. So we give each other that mysterious gift of waiting – of being present without making demands or asking rewards. There is nothing harder to do than this. It truly tests the depth and sincerity of our love. But there is life in the gift we give.

So lovers wait for each other – until they can see things the same way – or let each other freely see things in quite different ways.

There are times when lovers hurt each other and cannot regain the balance and intimacy of the way they were. They have to wait – in silence – but still present to each other – until the pain subsides to an ache and then only a memory and the threads of the tapestry can be woven together again in a single love story.

What do we lose when we refuse to wait? When we try to find short cuts through life – when we try to incubate love and rush blindly and foolishly into a commitment we are neither mature nor responsible enough to assume. We lose the hope of ever truly loving or of being loved. Think of all the great love stories of history and literature – isn’t this of their very essence, that they are filled with this strange but common mystery – that waiting is part of the substance – the basic fabric – against which the story of that true love is written.

How can we ever find true love if we are too impatient to wait for it?