"All of your past is gone,
except for the blessing it has left you."
-- A Course in Miracles
When I was a teenager, I had a girlfriend that I loved. We dated for a few short years, and she lived over an hour's drive from where I lived, so I didn't see her as often as I might have had she lived closer.
She was sort of my first real love and we would write each other in between visits. She had such beautiful handwriting and was a very good writer. At some point, the relationship came to a close. She wrote me a letter that I will never forget. In the letter, she wrote that "Love is like a snail. It comes and it goes, and it leaves a silvery trail."
That phrase has stuck with me all these years, and it became a foundation that I built my own personal philosophy of love on--at least, that's how I see it now looking back. It resonated with me completely in the part of the silvery trail. Love doesn't really come and go, it always is. It is just that in can feel like it comes and goes, such as being in love and then out of love. That's not true either. I think it is just our focus of attention changes and there can be a lot of reasons. We change. Others change. The world changes. Yet, my foundation became the idea that love never dies; that it is always alive, although we change.
This foundation has given me such joy all my life since. If I had chosen the philosophy of my parents, who were divorced twice by the time I was 16, it would be that you fall in love, then learn to tolerate, then learn to dislike, then hate, then divorce and then do it all over again. They were terrible examples, or rather, contrast to my choosing a more peaceful and loving way. In this respect, it is as the quote at the top says, "all of your past is gone, except for the blessing it has left you." The blessing left me was the contrast for me to choose differently.
My Love Never Dies, Nor Does It Decrease Ever. I Rejoice In That.
Spread Some Joy Today--How do you view love? Does it bring you joy throughout?
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