A Force to be Reckoned With.

Love.

Ugh. A four letter word😏.

Love demands. (pf) A lot. Of us. Ourselves.

It presents itself in a myriad of ways and means and meanings.

Demanding. Yep.Impossible at times. Most certainly. The expectation of one thing. And then getting another thing. Often leaves us scratching our heads.

It requires a self-discipline beyond human measure. A compassion that knows no bounds. A responsibility to put another’s needs before our very own. The friendship of diving in the deep end with another human with work and courage all mixed together in a persevering quest of honesty, loyalty, faith.

Talk about stress😬.

What love can make a person do in the heat of a desperate moment can change a life forever.

The reward?

Knowing it when you feel it.

Fake it til you make it.

Take it and run? Away. Toward. Pretend it exists, doesn’t exist.

Heck. What does it even look like? Sometimes. While so busy seeking it. We miss it is staring, gazing even, right into our eyes. When is enough, enough? We need to recognize when enough is enough.

But we do not always do this.

A frog is boiling water often does not even feel the heat.(lk)

Look before you leap?

Yep.

Don’t overthink it.

Yep. Again.

The prudent person looks before leaping.

Why?

”The Frogs and the Well”

Two frogs lived together in a marsh. But one hot summer the marsh dried up, and they left it to look for another place to live in, for frogs like damp places if they can get them. By and by they came to a deep well, and one of them looked down into it, and said to the other, “This looks like a nice cool place. Let us jump in and settle here.” But the other, who had a wiser head on his shoulders, replied, “Not so fast, my friend. Supposing this well dried up like the marsh, how should we get out again?” (wjb)

Think twice before you act.

Yep.

Don’t overthink it.

A life of love may depend upon prudence of patience and clear conscience. Accepting the bad with the good is a life lesson to be learned and re-learned in this complicated game of love.

Why?

Animals teach us so much about overconsumption.

Of anything📲📱🕹️🖲️💻. We humans complicate the bee-geebers out of things.

Learning to love oneself is a great gift.

Learning to love another is too.

Thinking that the world loves us? Doesn’t love us.

Who knows.

We set about improving that which we think we lack only to find a haze of who dunnit, whose doing it and I’m running the red light anyway because I will not get caught.

You will.

We think. I get away with anything and everything. Quick love. Fake love. Blah. Blah. Blah love. We think we need to hear it. Once. Twice. More? Never? To validate its existence.

Who knows.

Others may try to feed our egos. It is up to us to constrain it.

Otherwise. We eat the proverbial crow.🐦‍⬛

”The Fox and the Crow”

A coal-black crow once stole a piece of meat. She flew to a tree and held the meat in her beak.

A fox, who saw her, wanted the meat for himself, so he looked up into the tree and said, “How beautiful you are my friend! Your feather are fairer than the dove’s.

Is you voice as sweet as your form is beautiful? If so, you must be the queen of birds.”

The crow was so happy in his praise that she opened her mouth to show how she could sing. Down fell the piece of meat.

The fox seized upon it and ran away.🤦🏼‍♀️.

Yep. The fox loved the crow so much. Well that day, anyway. Didn’t quite stick around long enough to assess the needs of the crow. Kinda like a dine and dash date gone very bad. Or badly.

Love tests us in ways unimaginable.

What is the silver bullet anyway? The connector of all connections. Is it love? Big love. Little love. Pettiness can cause us to forget our obligation to one another.(wjb)

Energy zapping people have a way of zapping the energy out of a room. A friend. Someone we want to be with. An enemy. Someone we want our friend right by our side with when an enemy is present. Thinking of friends, and their worth, is often enough to drive away an army of fears, regrets and envies. (wjb)

When love is not advantageous for one at the expense of another.

Not a true partnership of an off and sailing ship at all. One-sidedness tips the boat over real quick leaving one treading water and the other swimming for their life.

Not fun.

Sadly. Then. We finally give up on love. We think the daily price is too high a price to pay. We build up our shield of protection and say, “No. No more.” We sacrifice the love we want for the empty we think we deserve.

Life is funny that way.

Not funny ha ha.

The good news?

Barriers are invitations to courage. (wjb)

Can open doors we never imagined could or would exist for us.

”Doors of Daring”

The mountains that I close the vale

With walls of granite, steep and high,

Invite the fearless foot to scale.

Their stairway toward the sky.

The restless, deep, dividing sea

That flows and foams from shore to shore,

Calls to its sunburned chivalry,

”Push out, set sail, explore!”

The bars of life at which we fret,

That seem to prison and control,

Are but the doors of daring, set,

Ajar before the soul.

Say not, “Too poor, but freely give;

Sigh not, Too weak, “ but boldly try;

You never can begin to live.

Until you dare to die. (hvd)

Ugh.

But. Ok.

No one said it would be easy.

No one said it should be so hard.

Love demands.A lot. Of us. Ourselves.

Someone, somewhere is out there on the wide open sea.

Wishing the best kind of love for you in a quiet, calm and vast way.