On Never Ending

Love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is the fruit of love the verb or our loving actions. So love. Sacrifice. Listen. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm.

Steven R. Covey

I don’t often write of love explicitly, but as I look back over my writings and think about how I live my life, I see the threads of love woven in my story. I sometimes feel alone, lost, isolated in this world, and a lack of connection, but if I am truthful, that is an illusion that is fed by insecurities, ego, and expectations. What I think I need as a connection to this time and place through a bond with another is just a reality of my own making. A manifestation of what is sometimes called consciousness, a soul, a spirit. That is not to say that the physical realm is not inconsequential, for just like a symphony, our existence is not just the strains of a violin, but an exquisite composition of instruments playing notes of unique, infinite melody in the universe.

When I was in graduate school, I knew a fellow classmate who was intensely religious. He called himself a born again, and though he didn’t preach his beliefs to others, he would talk about it if you asked. Curious me, we sat over beers and burgers one evening at a conference in Miami. He picked up a napkin and crinkled it. He placed it on the table between us. He said to me, pick it up. As I did he said “Look at it. It’s faith. Love. Belief. All you have you do is accept it’s there. It’s not magic. It just is, for us to take if we want it.”

I know he was speaking of his personal religious beliefs, but when I think back, I realize that, for me, it applies to everything. My personal truth I am coming to see is this: love is here. All around, in every leaf we see, every blade of glass, snowflake, sunset or sunrise. It’s in the laughter of a child, in the touch of a friend, in the arms of a lover. It is ours to take, if we have the openness to reach out. To curl our fingers around that which we can never grasp but yet fills all the space between. Invisible and ephemeral but strong enough to hold everything together. Love is.