Why??

[dogwood]

Why is love the most intense and amazing thing we can experience - why does it lift you up higher than you've ever been and become like a drug..

 

yet, people keep saying the main goal in life is to learn to be happy on your own, with yourself, and not depend on other people for happiness.

 

put these two things together, and seems the universe wants to make life very hard for us.

 

just a thought

[jettison]

If life weren't hard then you would be bored. Life is always about trying to balance yourself. Love isn't always just about sex and romance though.... love is the driving force behind everything we do.

 

Learning to be happy "on your own" does not mean that you're discluding love. To the contrary, you're learning to cultivate the love inside you, and practicing to show that love not just to a mate, but to everybody you encounter. That's what love is all about. You get to the point where you have so much love in you that you reach a tipping point, and you have no choice but to let your love flow out.

 

I personally think that the main reason that love is so powerful is because we all spend so much time on ourselves cultivating a social mask, feeding our egos, becoming this false person. We are building walls around us all the time to socially protect ourselves. "I'm a doctor, I'm an athlete, I'm a musician, I'm funny, I'm beautiful, I'm rich". No matter your poison, we crave these types of distinctions because they earn us respect, because they lend us control and power, and so that we won't have to feel at other's mercy. Basically, we can feel important.

 

However, all that work comes at a steep price. Your social mask is not you. It's all false. So when we fall in love (and not just lust or fixation), it means that we've found someone that we not only adore, but that we can feel free to be with minus those burdensome, tiresome social masks. It's the ultimate relief, the ultimate joy. In the end, being in love is about being with someone who makes you feel like your true, authentic self, and you still feel wonderful about it.