LOVE

If Love is all there is, what is it? You tell me.

Falling into love, loving, interdependence, losing love, aloneness, independence, surprise, loving again. Staying open to romantic love again after a breakup is a deeply spiritual process, requiring a lot of wisdom and faith and trust and a lot of letting go and giving over. How do we do it? How do we successfully get through the process knowing that suffering burns away the ego… say thank you to the suffering.

The Lovers by Magritte

This painting Man from Aran just posted on his Substack leaves me with many thoughts. is this a metaphor for being blinded by love?…but, if so, why cover the whole face and not just the eyes? Or maybe a metaphor for the superficial idea of not caring what someone looks when you love someone— making a statement on how truly loving someone means not caring what they look like? Or perhaps, another though that comes to me is wondering if this is perhaps a way to express that we go into love relationships blindly, unseeing what is to come — in the sense that eventually the honeymoon and lust diminish and we get to unveil the true wounded selves we came together to heal through love in the first place? Or is this just a powerful iconic image that arrests us in its mystery? Like sometimes a banana is just a banana. Or what?

What is love? All thought life, we use the one word we have in the English language that has way too many definitions and meanings for us to have only one word to express our feelings. If “love is all there is” when what is love? Love is complex - maybe the most complex and interwoven into and of all emotions and feelings we humans have. What do you think?

This old couple was walking down the street in Oaxaca, MX holding hands. I asked them if I could take a quick photo. They posed and were on their way, still holding hands.

Old couple in Oaxaca, photo: Linda Wolf 2017