A few days ago, I was talking to my friend about how he has been fighting to win the heart of his first love. Having “won” a major victory, he reflected on how he was starting to already feel a bit distant from him and wondered whether or not he was falling out of love with him. My initial response was to remind him that Love isn’t the “feel good” feeling one has, because feelings are ephemeral. But I left it there.
I had to ponder the significance for my own life of the question, “What does it mean to be in love?” After all, if I have spent the past two years “in love” with Aaron, that presumably counts as a relationship distinct from others. And it also begs the question, “What does it mean ‘to fall out of love’?”
Love isn’t that warm feeling that wells up inside of you, although that’s part of it. Love isn’t just an agreement to be there for each other over time nor is it some promise that I will care for you more deeply than I do for others. So what is left?
What is left is space. What is left is that emptiness that is a more open heart into which Love might pour. What’s left is the sweet silence, after that last love song has ended, in which you rediscover why you fell in love in the first place. What’s left is the end, after that last painful heave of a sob and you feel like you have nothing else left in you, … and you discover that there’s more.
Love is what is left. Love is at the very edge of who we are. It is the road that leads us back into ourselves and out into the world.

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