"Love Is A Many Splendored Thing"

I don't know anything that is more diverse than love.

Self love, which we are born with, seems to be the rarest and most fragile. Like fine old glass with its wavering reflections of light, it seems to become brittle, break and disappear before we even make it into our teens. Then we spend the rest of our lives aching for it.

It might be this ache that spurs us on towards the all the other loves, kind of like whatever it is that draws the salmon back up stream.

We are expected to love our families and most of us do, no matter how good, bad, dysfunctional, or extraordinary they are. Loving our home, whether that be a building, or town, country, or just the feeling that comes when we are together with those we rely on, seems to be another commonality.

Developing favorite colors, songs, and other personal preferences is often so intimately attached to love that we have learned to say, "I love green!" When in fact, it is sort of strange when I think about that, loving a thing, because I think of love as procreational, but I guess it is a shared love of things that can be the stepping stones leading into it and the products that emanate from us once we find it.

I also think of love as a living thing. Starting out small, as just a general sort of caring. Becoming all consuming when nothing else matters. Evening off and maturing as I realize that love means so much more than hearts and flowers and fireworks in my heart.

There comes a point where love means putting those I love ahead of my own wants and desires. A time when I set limits, even make the ones I love cry sometimes, out of a love that wants the best for them.

And there is a time when I am willing to change in order to grow more fully into a larger and even more fulfilling shared love. A time when it doesn't matter when I go to bed, or what time I eat, or even what I wear. It only matters that what I am doing lifts me up and holds me to a light like a prism, bringing out all my most beautiful parts.

The possibilities are endless.