“The most beautiful part of life is the part where you learn how to love.”
Some time ago, a girl met a boy who awoke a dimension of her soul that she didn’t know existed. When he came into her life, it was as if two souls joined together as very old and very dear friends. It was hard for her to describe any other way, because the experience was beyond any words she had been taught in this language of ours.
When she realized that she was in love with the boy, she began to think about her life in more enchanting terms. For her, it was a matter of raising the soul to what it desired – rather than frantically trying to make two incompatible things lie together in an unnatural way. What she felt – and continued to feel – toward this boy she loved was as easy as breathing, as clear as the bluest sky on a cloudless day. How could she express the instinct of her soul – to love, to join, to become one with this person who was at once so known and so mysterious? The thought of union filled her with yearning, with an inexplicable sense of rightness and peace. How could she dream of anything more incandescent in all the world?
And yet – the road to union, the path of love, was unpredictable and lined with thorns. In life, there are always difficulties to contend with – especially, it seems, when you are in pursuit of something so good you can barely speak. In my opinion (though I could be wrong), it is usually fear who muddies things up. Lousy old fear – that familiar companion – who confuses minds and tortures hearts in the form of doubts and hesitations and retreats from the truth. Fear, alas, likes to stand in the way of real love because fear (if you can permit me to say such a thing) is himself afraid – afraid of love. “Perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.” If I were fear, I’d be frightened, too – for there would be no greater threat to my existence than love.
So, as it was, the girl’s love took her by a long and often demanding way. There were many nights of sadness, when hope seemed like a fragile and fleeting friend. But how could the girl think of choosing another route, another road? When all is said, and the chaos of life dies down to the core of stillness that rests in every human being, it becomes clear that the only thing that counts, the only activity that could be multiplied one thousand times and still feel fresh and compelling and new, is love.
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” What more beautiful tribute to the God Who made us than to pour our hearts out in the service of another’s good? Can we stretch ourselves to care so much for another human that we forget ourselves in the process – and so, in forgetting, rediscover ourselves in the truth of who we really are? It is always in giving that we receive, and in dying to self that we are born again. The girl knew this truth in the depths of her heart and she kept her eyes fixed on a reality that seemed invisible to so many others.
And so, in the end, we can say that the girl gave her heart to the most beautiful person she’d ever known – and desired his happiness with all her soul – only to find a simple, quiet acceptance of life as it was, unfolding with all its surprises in the most awesome and impossible ways.