What is love?
You know it when you feel it. More important, you know it when you don’t.
Love and romance, they are not the same. Romance is the high, a hope-elation.
Love is something more.
Love is the selflessness, acts of service—great and small—we give because we care about another.
It’s sincere words when that’s what’s needed and truly what we feel. It’s the help we have, the help we can give—and so we do—in presence and help for another through trial or simply life.
It’s the burdens we take upon ourselves for the lessening of another’s…It’s recognition when others do the same with ours.
It’s showing up when we really don’t want to, but do, because—whatever it is—time and presence shared with beloved will matter more in the end than the rest and quiet—or whatever else—we’d wanted then.
It’s feeling empty, then—finding more—giving the more that’s there.
Love is not the romance that lives in ease (at least not completely). Love is the romance we find looking back on life—written in acts—in moments when ease isn’t; love is the presence, the showing up and giving, because bond beloved matter more than any impermanence of feeling.