school of love

This past year has been for me a school of love. One would wish that all the lessons would be of the type "and then they lived happily ever after", but even when they are not, there is so much to be learned.

For instance, I have come to realize that just as beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, love also can reside in the one loving rather than in the object of that love. We love people/things we think are lovable. And, surprisingly, we continue to do so, even when we know that the person/thing in itself is not necessarily good to/for us. For example chocolate: after so many of us are more or less overweight, why do we not forsake this love, and shift it by starting to love carrots the same way? Let alone people...

I found that love is also a habit: once learned, it is almost impossible to unlearn, a bit like riding a bicycle. Granted, we will not all do a tour de France of love, but once you have learned to keep the thing going, you can do it even in the most diverse circumstances, almost as if by an instinct.

What I've learned though that this is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes the kind of loving I do, or what I think is love showed towards me, might not be that at all, but just because I'm so used to doing it that way, I cease to question its nature. Back to bicycle riding, when my kids were small, I had a hard time concinving them that they could actually ride their bikes even without me holding on or without the training wheels attached to the bike itself. This past year I have started to unlearn the to me self-evident ways of loving and being loved.

I now have a whole new world of love lying ahead of me: so much to unlearn and so much to learn...