When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. I saw this happen today as the sun went down. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! No herons, no distant music, not even the taste of his lips. How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly!
Life moves very fast. It rushes us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds. [9]If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself. If I ‘m looking for true love, I first have to get the mediocre loves out of my system. The little experience of life I’ve had has taught me that no one owns anything, that everything is an illusion – and that applies to material as well as spiritual things. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them.
And if nothing belongs to me, then there’s no point wasting my time looking after things that aren’t mine; it’s best to live as if today were the first (or last) day of my life. [16]
I stood for a long time by the roller coaster, and I noticed that most people get on it in search of excitement, but once it starts, they are terrified and want the cars to stop.
What do they expect? Having chosen adventure, shouldn’t they be prepared to go the whole way? Or do they think that the intelligent thing to do would be to avoid the ups and downs and spend all their time on a carousel, going round and round on the spot?
At the moment, I’m far too lonely to think about love, but I have to believe that it will happen… The roller coaster is my life; life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it’s taking chances, falling over and getting up again, it’s mountaineering; it’s a wanting to get to the very top of yourself and to feel angry and dissatisfied when you don’t manage it.
If I had fallen asleep and suddenly woken up on a roller coaster, what would I feel?
Well, I would feel trapped and sick, terrified of every bend, wanting to get off. However, if I believe that the track is my destiny and that God is in charge of the machine, then the nightmare becomes something thrilling. It becomes exactly what it is, a roller coaster, a safe, reliable toy, which will eventually stop, but while the journey lasts, I must look at the surrounding landscape and whoop with excitement. [47]
Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spend waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books. A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.
Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person’s whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take totally a different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love could really transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly. [53]
In the search for happiness, however, we are all equal: none of us is happy. [56]
I’m not a body with a soul, I’m a soul that has a visible part called body. All this week, contrary to one might expect, I have been more conscious of the presence of this soul than usual It didn’t say anything to me, didn’t criticize me or feel sorry for me: it merely watched me.
Today, I realized why this was happening, it’s been such a long time since I thought about love or anything called love. It seems to be running away from me, as if it wasn’t important any more and didn’t feel welcome. But if I don’t think about love, I will be nothing. [71]
I need to write about love. I need to think and think and write and write about love – otherwise, my soul won’t survive. [72]
Men are very strange, and I didn’t just mean the ones who come to the Copacabana, but all the men I’ve ever met. They can beat you up, shout at you, threaten you, and yet they’re scared of women really. Perhaps not the woman they married, but there’s always one woman who frightens them and forces them to submit to her caprices. Even if it’s their own mother. [81]
All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that’s a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.
And the person who loves wholeheartedly feels free.
In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.
It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone.
That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it. [90]
There is a name for that pebble: passion. It can be used to describe the beauty of an earth-shaking meeting between two people, but it isn’t just that. It’s there in the excitement of the unexpected, in the despite to do something with real fervor, in the certainty that one is going to realize a dream. Passion sends us signals that guide us through our lives, and it’s up to me to interpret those signs. [112]
I would like to believe that I’m in love. With someone I don’t know and who didn’t figure in my plans at all. All these months of self-control, of denying love, have had exactly the opposite result; I have let myself be swept away by the first person to treat me a little differently.
I can lose him without having to blame myself for another missed opportunity. And if that is what happens, if I have already lost him, I will at least have gained one very happy day in my life. Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle. 113
Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.
He should have saved me, I should have saved him, but he left me with no choice. [116]
Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.
No one wants their life thrown into chaos.
Other people think exactly the opposite; they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blames the for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything.
Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it – which of these two attitudes is the least destructive? I don’t know. [120]
“But you loved.”
“Oh, yes, I loved, I loved very deeply. I loved so deeply that when my love asked me for a gift, I took fright and fled.” [130]
Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone. From that point onwards, things change, the man and the woman come into play, but what happens before – the attraction that brought them together – is impossible to explain. It is untouched desire in its purest state.
When desire is still in this pure state, the man and woman fall in love with life, they live each moment reverently, consciously, always ready to celebrate the next blessing.
When people feel like this, they are not in a hurry, they do not precipitate events with unthinking actions. They know that the inevitable will happen, that what is real always finds a way of revealing itself. When the moment comes, they do not hesitate, they do not miss an opportunity, they do not let slip a single magic moment, because they respect the importance of each second. [133]
I’ve met a man and fallen in love with him. I allowed myself to fall in love for one simple reason: I’m not expecting anything to come of it.
It’s enough just to love him, to be with him in my thoughts and to color this lovely city with his steps, his words, his love.
Really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other. Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meetings are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes direction.
Everyone knows how to love, because we are all born with that gift. Some people have a natural talent for it, but the majority of us have to re-learn, to remember how to love, and everyone, without exceptions, needs to burn on the bonfire of past emotions, to relive certain joys and griefs, certain ups and downs, until they can see the connecting thread that exists behind each new encounter; because there is a connecting thread. [139]
She wanted to tell him that she loved him. But that would spoil everything, it might frighten him, or worse, might make freedom of her love depended on asking nothing and expecting nothing. [163]
Every human being experiences his or her own desire; it is part of our personal treasure and although, as an emotion, it can drive people away, generally speaking, it brings those who are important to us closer. It is an emotion chosen by my soul, and it is so intense that it can infect everything and everyone around me.
Each day I choose the truth by which I try to live. I try to be practical, efficient, professional. But I would like to be able always to choose desire as my companion. Not out of obligation, not to lessen my loneliness, but because it is good. Yes, very good. [165]
She loved him and couldn’t understand why he behaved like that; he loved her and couldn’t understand his own behavior. It was as if the agony that the one inflicted on the other was necessary, fundamental to life. [185]
When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.
When I experienced humiliation and total submission, I was free. I don’t know if I’m ill, if it was all a dream or if it only happens once. I know that I can perfectly well live without it, but I would like to do it again, to repeat the experience, to go still further. [188]
After all, we are human beings, we are born full of guilt; we feel terrified when happiness becomes a real possibility; and we die wanting to punish everyone else because we feel impotent, ill-used, unhappy. To pay for only one’s sins and be able to punish the sinners, wouldn’t that be delicious? Oh, yes, wonderful. [195]
Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it’s seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self-denial. Or cowardice. However much we may reject it, we human beings always find a way of being with pain, of flirting with it and making it part of our lives. [201]
But I cannot simply do nothing, pretend that everything is normal, that it’s just a stage, a phase of my life. I want to forget it, I need to love – that’s all, I need to love.
Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly. [206]
In all languages in the world, there is the same proverb: “What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.” Well, I say that there isn’t an ounce of truth in it. The further off they are, the closer to the heart are all those feelings that we try to repress and forget. If we’re in exile, we want to store away every tiny memory of our roots. If we’re far from the person we love, everyone we pass in the street reminds us of them. [232]
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