Love soothes our wounds

Photo: Li Hui

"Most things break instead of transform because they resist. The quiet miracle of love is that without our interference, it, like water, accepts whatever is tossed or dropped or placed into it, embracing it completely.”

“Of course, we are human and are easily hurt if not loved back or if loved poorly. But we waste so much of life’s energy deliberating who and what shall be worthy of our love when in the deepest elemental sense, these choices are not in our province, anymore than rain can choose what it shall fall upon.”

“Certainly we need to make decisions: Who will I spend my time with? Who will I learn from? Who will I live with? Who will I marry? But beneath all that, the element of love doesn’t stop being elemental. It does not stop covering everything before it. And over a lifetime, the pain of withholding this great and quiet force is more damaging than the pain of being rejected or loved poorly.”

“For love, like water can be dammed, but toward what end?”

“In truth, the more we let love flow through, the more we have to love. This is the inner glow that sages and saints of all ages seem to share: the wash of their love over everything before them; not just people, but birds and rocks and flowers and air.”

“Beneath the many choices we have to make, love, like water, flows back into the world through us. It is the one great secret available to all. Yet somewhere the misperception has been enshrined that to withhold love will stop hurt. In truth, it is the other way around. As water soaks scars, love soothes our wounds.”

“If opened up to, love will accept the angrily thrown stone, and our small tears will  lose some of their burn inthe great ocean of tears, and the arrow released to the bottom of the river will lose its point.”


~Mark Nepo from The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have