Love and Pain

Love life and yourself
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
-- Lao Tzu
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.
We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
"It matters not Who you love, Where you love, Why you love, When you love, Or how you love, It matters only that you love."
-- John Lennon
"Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"
-- Frank Scully

I have been watching a lot of my friends suffer through relationships with their current, past or desired significant others and it makes me wonder why we go through such stresses. I listen to the questioning of whether the significant is worth fighting for, if it is true love or just a "place-holder" on the path for something more. My incessant worrying causes me to wonder why/how I have found someone in my life with whom I can relax and not have these issues and conficts. I never have before, so I am going to go with the idea that I am due. I was far too tired of the bullshit of relationships and was about to just give it up and do my own thing, alone, when he came to me. I am lucky. I wish my friends could find such happiness. Nothing is perfect, I am not a fool. My own baggage plagues my relationship, but I try daily to remember that past is past. It is true, loving someone else gives one courage. I have be brave, fight my fear of being hurt, because I am too much in love and too loved not to.