A poet

If you find yourself in love with
someone who does not love you, be
gentle with yourself. There is nothing
wrong with you. Love just didn’t
choose to rest in the other person’s
heart.

If you find someone else in love with
you and you don’t love him/her, feel
honored that love came and called at
your door, but gently refuse the gift
you cannot return, do not take
advantage, do not cause pain.

How you deal with love is how you deal
with you, and all our hearts feel the
same pains and joys, even if our lives
and ways are different.

If you fall in love with another, and
he/she falls in love with you, and
then love chooses to leave, do not try
to reclaim it or to assess blame, let
it go. There is a reason and there is
a meaning. You will know in time.

Remember that you don’t choose love.
Love chooses you. All you can really
do is accept it for all its mystery
when it comes into your life. Feel the
way it fills you to overflowing, then
reach out and give it away.

Give it back to the person who brought
it alive in you. Give it to others who
deem it poor in spirit. Give it to the
world around you in anyway you can.
There is where many lovers go wrong.
Having been so long without love, they
understand love only as a need. They
see their hearts as empty places that
will be filled by love, and they begin
to look at love as something that
flows to them rather than from them.

The first blush of new love is filled
to overflowing, but as their love
cools, they revert to seeing their
love as need. They cease to be someone
who generates love and instead become
someone who seeks love.

They forget that the secret of love is
that it is a gift, and that it can be
made to grow only by giving it away.

Remember this, and keep it to your
heart. Love has its own time, its own
seasons, and its own reason for coming
and going. You cannot bribe it or
coerce it, or reason it into saying.
You can only embrace it when it
arrives and give it away when it comes
to you. But if it chooses to leave
from your heart or from the heart of
your lover, there is nothing you can
do and there is nothing you should do.

Love always has been and always will
be a mystery. Be glad that it came to
live for a moment in your life.