FRIDAY, 6 JANUARY 2006
Realisation strikes: You become aware of the power and the choice to be good to someone, to do something that would make that person’s experience of reality better, something that may even give that person’s life a more beautiful quality. And it provides you with a particular satisfaction to turn that choice, that potential, into reality.
SUNDAY, 22 JANUARY 2006
A large part of what is called “love” in an intimate relationship is an intense compassion the two people have for one another, which in turn stems from a perception, after repeated and continuous contact in a wide range of situations, of the “other one” as one like me, in the most significant philosophical and psychological way possible.
The compassion aspect of “love” is deeply rooted. Once this attitude towards a particular person takes root, it can last a lifetime. It is much, much stronger than mere feeling – which can vary from day to day, and according to mood and circumstance.
Choice – an expression of free will and an expression of how you see yourself, how you define yourself and how you wish to be seen by others – plays a greater role in the compassion aspect of love than in the excitement of romantic euphoria.
The more compassion there is in an intimate relationship, the more accurately the relationship can be described as one where “true love” is the order of the day – or a relationship where “true love” acts as the ruling agent. If an intimate relationship is primarily characterised by romantic euphoria, with the much more significant and substantial compassion aspect mostly absent, or where the relationship is regularly jeopardised by actions and behaviour that fluctuate according to feeling, it would be more accurate to say that “true love” is indeed not the governing agent in a particular relationship.
True love can ultimately only develop in an intimate relationship if the respective characters of the two parties permit it – character which stems from the development of your person, self-knowledge and a healthy degree of self-esteem.
SATURDAY, 28 JANUARY 2006
The ability to love precedes any significant relationship. It is of course a common occurrence for a relationship between two people to be conducive for this ability to love to be activated. It is also true that some relationships prove over the course of some time to simply not be conducive to activating this ability.
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