9:45 pm
What is love?
Love is being depressed about what has been.
Love is being anxious about what could be.
Love is being at peace with what is.
Love is hope.
Hoping the next day will be brighter than this one.
Hoping that waking up is a blessing and not a burden.
Hoping that starting over is not failure but growth.
Hope is energy.
Energy to initiate again.
Energy to do what has been done a thousand times and never got the desired reciprocity.
Energy to understand this will be different but may not be better.
Energy is patience.
Patience to learn about someone new, their flaws, and their insecurities, for this is what makes them shine.
Patience to care about emotions as if it were as fragile as life itself.
Patience to love the self as the self loves others.
Patience is understanding.
Understanding that a new person is a slate written in a foreign emotional language.
Understanding that emotional processing is relative; their suffering may be another’s mental exercise.
Understanding that the self, internal interpretation of the perception of another is not the same as that person’s self, internal interpretation of their perspective.
Understanding is acceptance.
Acceptance of discernment, for that which can be controlled and that which cannot.
Acceptance that completeness and closure does not exist.
Acceptance that humans are naturally inclined to suffer more in their imagination than in reality.
Acceptance is appreciation.
Appreciation for what could have happened, what should have happened, and what did happen.
Appreciation for those who stayed for a paragraph, for those left after multiple chapters, and for those who were the starting point for an entire volume.
Appreciation for the lessons and opportunities, both the ones that felt painful and the ones that felt like destiny.
Appreciation is the ugly dualities.
The duality of love: to love deeply but to love wisely.
The duality of hope: the love of the busy sunshine and the quiet moonlight.
The duality of energy: to keep moving forward when hope is covered in rain.
The duality of patience: the energy to be proud of yourself despite your setbacks.
The duality of understanding: to know that with patience, this too shall pass, for better or for worse.
The duality of acceptance: the harshest of teachers and the most valuable of lessons.
The duality of appreciation: while there is the desire to receive the love we believe we deserve, appreciation is that we have the love we have always needed, not necessarily the love we always wanted.
What is love?
Love is the art of life and life is what you make of it.