I see, love

In a world full of anger, I choose love.

A writer friend wrote an article about a dating website in the Telegraph. A site for the well to do, with a line about a New Yorker being drawn to someone from London because he was attracted to "European women and their effortless sophistication" :)

Another friend is going through a divorce. Where is there love in the world?

What are we attracted to, and how is that compatible with attaining love? From an older article How to Heal your Heart

Now would be a good time, I think, to ask the question, is there love in the world, and how do we heal our broken hearts?
When I wrote 'Man From Atlan' in 1974 I saw that humanity's greatest challenges would come through its relationships: our relationships with each other, and our relationships with ourselves.

Now, I think it's a lot more complex than that. How do we, given the state of the world today, find love? Should we not see how we relate to our environment before we can even find a relationship? Do you love your self, did you see your parents love each other, do you love others? Are you passionate about something, anything??

There are those who want it all: Love, attraction, family. There are some who, because of their own history, don't trust it at all. The current environment, of anger, youth alienation, sexual orientation, makes it that much harder. Sure, people still meet and fall in love. Except it sometimes doesn't last. Why is that?

What of the role of karma? Family, children, loved ones all come with their own, um, baggage. How do you overcome this?

I used to joke how I was operating a 'dating service'. Sure, I was the agency by which many people met others. But they still had to, probably more often because I was in the background, work on their own um issues.

What is love? Is it, as written here Is it Love or is it Confusion?

two individuals who maintain their separate identities, yet intimately join together based on mutual interests, excitement, enjoyment, the sharing of novel or stimulating experiences, and a shared capacity to learn from the negative emotions they experience.

like Jimmy Hendrix sang in Love,  or Confusion?

Oh, my mind is so mixed up, goin’ round ‘n’ round
Most there be all these colors without names,
Without sounds?
My heart burns with feelin’ but
Oh! But my mind is cold and reeling.
Is this love, baby
Or is it confusion?

Shakespeare , the greatest writer on love Shakespeare's Treatment of Love and Marriage

"The Shakespearean world is impressed, as a whole, with an unmistakable joy in healthy living. This tells habitually as a pervading spirit, a contagious temper, not as a creed put forward, or an example set up. It is as clear in the presentment of Falstaff or lago, as of Horatio or Imogen. And nowhere is it clearer than in his handling of the relations between men and women". (Edited to add: applied equally to all genders and orientations. We are talking about love and relationships after all, and we are all, in need of love).

There is his ideal love:

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.

Or how do we remove the blocks that prevent us from finding love?

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie 
Which we ascribe to heaven.

I wrote "Man From Atlan" when I was trying to find, not love, but balance. "Oh, you're looking for a white girl", said the Scottish lady psychic, Betty Robinson of Toronto, who was my friend. "Well, it won't be, because she's going to be Egyptian" :)

"Not true", I said. "It's that I know she'll be 'white'. And sure enough, she was, someone who I remembered from a past life in Egypt, then another who inspired me to write Man From Atlan, a novel about past lives and searching through many lives for the soul mate.

The Beginning

I'm afraid of being alone, I cried.

You need not be afraid, he said in his infinite kindness.

There will always be Love..

The End

And it was this, above all, that had come back to him.

Love.

~The Man From Atlan (1974)

We're surrounded by love. There will indeed, always be love. Yes, it sometimes takes a journey to find it, but it is there.

I am fortunate to have had the love of many friends, family, to have not one great love, but three.

Yes, it is possible to love, and attain love. But not always, an easy path. Humanity's greatest challenges can indeed come from relationships, and we have all had that period of great challenge come to us since 2007.

But here's how you find love. You don't look for it, it just..comes.

There is the love the heart knows.

There is the love that comes from just giving.

And for all of you, there is love...