LOVE AND CHANCE

When we truly love, somewhere in the deepest part of us we are aware of being connected with another human being. When we feel that love, we are connected because there is nothing in that moment that separates us in our minds, our very consciousness, from another. In that moment there are no judgments and no conditions though often times during our interactions with our loved ones, we will judge or place conditions – at least temporarily. When we begin to understand what love really is, as love becomes who we are rather than what we do, there is less fear, less worry about loss of love, less judgment, fewer conditions.

Until then, we as humans become fearful that through death or choice we will be separated from one we love. So love carries with it a certain amount of risks. We live in fear that love will be lost to us. The more we fear, the more the illusion of being separated grows.

This fear may manifest in a person wanting to possess or hold on too tightly to another person. They may smother others who dare to love them. They may be given to fits of jealousy. Their fear of being separated may cause them to beg a terminally ill loved one to hang on to living and to endure longer than necessary their illness and pain . In extreme cases this so-called love that is really fear masquerading as love, may lead to abuse or murder particularly if rejection seems to be a real or imagined.

Fear of losing love may cause a person to not be willing to take a chance on love and thereby lose on many opportunities to experience the love they so desperately hope for. Anything worth having brings with it some challenges and some risks. Love is always worth it. I was a widow when I met and fell in love with my second husband. He told me pretty early in the relationship that he had CLL (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia). What this meant was that while the disease was not causing any problems at the moment and required no treatment, at some point it could cause complications that would inevitably lead to death. We had no idea how long or short a time we would have together. The chances that he would die before I would were pretty great and so I knew that if I took a chance on love with him, at some point I would lose him. I knew how painful that could be and though I wasn’t looking forward to that prospect, of living that loss once again, I could not say no to love. I only had seven years with him before he died. Was it worth it? You bet.

We may begin to feel that love is something that we get from another and that others can either give to you or withhold from you. Love is something we have inside and it is always with us. Love is the gift of ourselves that we give to one another. It is in the giving of ourselves, this love we are, that we receive love for what we give flows back to us. Like an echo we extend love out and it comes back to us over and over again.

Perfect love casts out fear we have heard. It is true. We either love or fear. We either love or resist love out of fear.

When we take a chance on love, we open ourselves to risk of separation but as Alfred, Lord Tennyson said, “ ‘Tis better to have love and lost than never to have loved at all.”