expression / love / intimacy
the idea of always reading someone else’s horoscope
Intimacy is not ownership, and it is not always reciprocal in the way we hope. You can feel deeply connected to someone who will never feel that with you. That doesn’t diminish the intimacy; it simply reveals its asymmetry. And you can be intimate with people without ever touching them - a mentor, a stranger whose story becomes part of your own, a friend with whom words are unnecessary. Western individualism, shaped by scarcity logic, insists intimacy is a scarce resource, something to be hoarded. But intimacy multiplies. It expands as it is shared. The soul, unlike the ego, is generous in its capacity for closeness.
To be loved is to be known
open.substack.com
Love changes what we pay attention to. We start noticing things they care about because we care about them. We learn things we will continue to know even if we end up growing apart.
How does this Buddhist framing of love compare with Western notions like Augustine’s caritas or Fromm’s “giving” love?
western views of love and nuclear family - how does this change love
in true love, you want the other person to be happy. If they are not with you, you still want them to be happy.
thich nhat hahn
to love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love.
simone weil
He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee which he loves not for Thy sake.
st augustine
For years and years I struggled just to love my life. And then the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind. “Don’t love your life too much,” it said, and vanished into the world.
Mary Oliver • Dream Work
To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
mary oliver, in blackwaters