in the virtually infinite universe is a conscious being that is me

these are the moments when i felt the most free

 on heartbreak

I am going to talk with a word I hope you'll forgive me using... I think when you reach out and love, your soul changes shape. If in the future, you couldn't be with them anymore, try as you may, your soul will never return to its previous shape. Because that person has become a small part of your soul. When a departure is not away from this world we know, you can take light in the fact that they are still somewhere in the world, living, prospering. They are not gone at all, merely somewhere else doing something else. You can imagine how they are doing, that they are building their life, somewhere in the world, becoming happy and growing, always growing. You could never know what could happen between you in the future - just be their friend. Let them know you are still here. This is not saying you couldn't move on. You too will do other things, be in other places.  Perhaps you'll forget much of it, you will forget too. But in time, the few memories you have retained you will hold onto as precious as anything.

""All love is great, love doesn't come in different sizes, whenever one is in love, they're in love with a unique person. Maybe every person is unique, maybe when one is in love they see a person as they really are, or how God sees them." -Borges in The Last Interview and Other Conversations (p169)

Most people would say love is a feeling, and I would agree. But I think love is also an action: it is in what you do for the beloved and how you reciprocate.  When I had loved, and perhaps still love, with my lover I felt at peace.  I felt happy and I felt like I am myself.  There was a likeness between him and I.  I wouldn't want to overstate what it was, so for an explanation, I think he and I were both young, filled with anticipation, excitement, and purpose toward the future.  We were in a beautiful place and we were beautiful people for each other.  (Maybe he was more beautiful than me, but there is no way to find out now.)  We were looking out together, holding hands and dreaming what the future could bring.  And this appears in retrospect as love.  Yet this explanation does not explain why, even now, after all these years, indeed a lifetime later, I still feel contentment and fulfillment when I ponder that he is somewhere in the world, doing what he does.  It makes me happy to think I am so lucky to have found someone like that, to have this experience which I had never imagined.  And surprised too, that nothing could take this away from me.  I am quite certain I have lived an experience I had never expected.  I wasn't looking for it, yet I found it, which makes me think I do not know so much, that there is so much more.  And what's more, the feeling that something greater than me was made for me.  Even now, when he is so far away, and perhaps many expressed attributes about either of us have changed that our old selves we could barely recognize as ourselves anymore, I still think it would be regrettable, though I wouldn't know it, if it had never happened at all.  I didn't know there could be so much meaning in knowing of another human being's mere existence.  Although these feelings have never left me after our paths diverged, I feel no urgency to summon him back into my life.  I am not sure if our circumstances today would allow us to be so close again.  How badly do I desire a simple friendship with him.  Is it even possible?  There is no opportunity to reciprocate and that is regrettable.  Perhaps I had given back to him what he had given me, at the time, at the time.  How do I reciprocate what has been given to me, to last forever this memory, his being there in the world?  It is true that in this life we cannot have everything we want - but how I look into the future, hoping against hope that one day our paths should cross again.

I think loving confers a greater benefit to the lover than the beloved. When you love, you feel elation and the future is full of possibilities.  It's as though the sun is suddenly shining in a bright blue sky, and all the colors of nature come to life.  There is so much good in the world.  And that no one can stop you from loving, while in being loved and needing to be loved we are constantly conscious that it could all end, if the lover changes his mind or goes off and love someone else instead.  There is nothing to lose in loving.  You choose to love, and that confirms your freedom, to live, to love.  I admire those who say "Spread the love" - I think they love and are in love and see love everywhere in everything.  What an enviable position to be in.