ahem, read this

Being alone in the grandeur and beauty of nature, where we are transported from the little world of our personal concerns and become instilled by a sense of awe, peace, and good feelings, are similar to the feelings of the heart and the essence of love.

Most of us have a distorted idea of what love is and how to have it in our lives because of a lack of love in our childhood. Our struggle to get it from someone else in romantic relationships results in disappointment and heartache.

Over time, we learned to adjust and protect ourselves from the indifference and alienation of the social structure. But behind the walls of our defenses is anger and sad hearts. We become like the starved lion, who hungers for love.

In our hunger for love, we believe that one day Mr. or Miss Perfect will come along and we will magically fall in love. They will give us the love we have always wanted, make us happy, and fill up the lonely emptiness of our lives. But our expectations are never completely met, thus leaving us disillusioned and hurt.

We fall in love with an illusion created by our own state of deprivation and expectations. We are therefore mostly concerned with how our lover can fulfill our needs and dreams. In The Art Of Loving, Erich Fromm says, "The active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving...The person whose character has not developed beyond the stage of receptive, exploitive, or hoarding orientation, experiences the act of giving, but only in exchange for receiving. Giving without receiving is for him being cheated." This is one of the biggest obstacles to expression of our love in a rich and healthy relationship.

We need to learn how to grow up emotionally, to take care of the needs that went unmet in childhood. We need to remember how to love ourselves, to return to the innocence of our infancy. To feel love, to give and receive it fully, we must feel truly worthy of it. Our greatest challenge here lies in developing deeper and deeper levels of honesty by acknowledging and sharing our feelings and thoughts.

Inner honesty means trusting that we are naturally lovable when we are being ourselves. If we hide and do not share our inner self, then we are acting as if we are separate, covering something up that we believe will cause someone to reject us.

No one can give us love. It doesn't come from anyone or anything "out there". It is an inherent power and state of being that we can meet and share in, but it cannot be given back and forth like a commodity. Love is within. It is at all times present. We need to open our hearts to the infinite reservoir of love and goodness within. Thus others will feel safer and more readily open their hearts around us.

To know love, we must be in love. To live wholeheartedly, this is the secret of life.

--Dajawn Breaux