Love is change. To love I must both change and be changed by that which I am loving. If the love is light the change is light, a glance or a smile or a moment of connection. As the love grows deeper the change grows deeper.
Paradoxically, love is also stability. When I am cut my body changes to heal. When I leave my home the world changes me, and when I return to my home my family brings me back to a place of balance. There is change at the heart of resilience.
But we can only be changed so much in a day, a year, a lifetime. Sometimes the love that changes us aligns in a symphony, shaping a being that can sit in a diverse multitude of love in peace and stillness. But it is more common for different loves to change us in different ways, for change born of valid and beautiful love to strain us.
To love we must choose how will be changed, by whom and by what we will be changed. To not make this choice, to truly say yes to all paths towards love, is to be torn asunder.
We can envision ourselves loving the world. We can have abstract feelings of love for every living being on the planet. We can seek to walk through the world with compassion. But to live we must decide who and what we are changed by. We must name not only the love we feel, but the love that shapes us.
